whenever i click on an item, the link opens in the default browser window which happenst to be IE.
I would like to know how i can open the news item in Firefox.

Ykiran - why do you want the item to load in a browser that is not your default/preferred browser?

well, i don't use IE very much, the only reason it exists in my system is for my parents to use....thats why.

Saad, u there?

Particls is programed to automatically load URLs in the default OS browser.  Sometimes, dureing a FireFox installation, FF doesnt proplerly asign itself as the default browser.  When this happens, Particls actually traps an error, becasue it failed to launch the URL.  If this error is trapped, then we manually launch the URL using iexplore.exe.

I was recently thinking, however, that it might be good (and easy) to have a setting in Particls which would allow power users to override this behaviour, and this would certianly solve the browser issue for many users. 

 If your gaim, set your upgrade mode to "Experimental" and I will see if I can slip this into an upcomming build for you.