To eww or not to eww

Recent Emacs versions include a decent text based web browser called eww. There is a good example configuration here. I found that I like using eww for some things, but at other times I want to use a full GUI web browser (I like Firefox).

I set eww to be my default browser in Emacs with

(setq browse-url-browser-function 'eww-browse-url)

but then I create some wrapper functions for times when I want to use my system default browser (i.e. Firefox).

In mu4e emails, hitting g will now open a URL in eww, but with the following lines I can use G to open in Firefox:

;; open link in firefox rather than eww
(defun bjm/mu4e-view-go-to-url-gui ()
  "Wrapper for mu4e-view-go-to-url to use gui browser instead of eww"
  (interactive)
  (let ((browse-url-browser-function 'browse-url-default-browser))
    (mu4e-view-go-to-url)))
;; bind it
(define-key mu4e-view-mode-map (kbd "G") 'bjm/mu4e-view-go-to-url-gui)

In elfeed, hitting b opens an article in eww if that is set to be the default Emacs browser. With the following lines I can hit B to open an article in Firefox. Note that I had to resort to calling the Mac open command to open the URL with the system default browser. On linux systems the xdg-open command should do the same thing.

;; browse article in gui browser instead of eww
(defun bjm/elfeed-show-visit-gui ()
  "Wrapper for elfeed-show-visit to use gui browser instead of eww"
  (interactive)
  (let ((browse-url-generic-program "/usr/bin/open"))
    (elfeed-show-visit t)))

(define-key elfeed-show-mode-map (kbd "B") 'bjm/elfeed-show-visit-gui)