Cannot change default browser

[cothrige <cothrige@bellsouth.net>]

I have been using kopete, as gaim wasn't behaving quite to my needs,
and found that when it prompts me to open an inbox on one of my
accounts it always opens epiphany.  Of course, the first thing I did
was try to change whatever kopete thought was the right browser, but I
could find nothing at all in the config options which indicated any
selections of browsers.

I don't have a full KDE installed, and so there is no control center
type of thing I can run to change that.  But I switched to gnome long
enough to open the control center there and set firefox as default,
but it did not work.  I opened firefox and had it check for whether it
was the default browser, and then made is such, but this also had no
effect.

After reading the man page and some online helps, I tried
'update-alternatives --set x-www-browser /usr/bin/firefox' but I still
get epiphany.  When I run 'update-alternatives --list x-www-browser'
this is what I get: 
/usr/bin/epiphany 
/usr/bin/firefox 
/usr/bin/opera

If I run 'update-alternatives --config x-www-browser' I get:

There are 3 alternatives which provide `x-www-browser'.

  Selection    Alternative
-----------------------------------------------
 +        1    /usr/bin/epiphany
*         2    /usr/bin/firefox
          3    /usr/bin/opera

Press enter to keep the default[*], or type selection number: 2
Using `/usr/bin/firefox' to provide `x-www-browser'.

I have checked display and it says x-www-browser is set to manual, so
I thought the + would not mean anything, but it still defaults
everytime to epiphany.

Finally, I uninstalled epiphany, causing untold problems in the Gnome
world, and this caused Opera to open.  I actually like opera for some
things, but not this, and so don't really want to have to uninstall
it.  So, now I am back to square one.

Just how do I convince this app not to use any browser but firefox?

Many thanks for any help,

Patrick