How to Open Internet Explorer and Other Browsers in KiXtart
I know I’ve been posting a lot of KiXtart stuff lately, and I don’t mean to have my blog become all about KiXtart but it seems to be a pretty popular topic. I’ve been watching my web stats and have seen a few users come by from searches looking for how to open a browser from KiXtart so I thought I’d post the answer.
Here’s a function to open the default web browser. An optional URL can be specified and it will be opened in the browser.
; Open the default browser FUNCTION OpenDefaultBrowser (OPTIONAL $URL) ; Get the command line to start the default browser $BrowserCommand = READVALUE ("HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\HTTP\shell\open\command", "") ; Check if there is a %1 in the command IF INSTR ($BrowserCommand, "%1") ; Replace any occurences of %1 with the URL $BrowserCommand = JOIN (SPLIT ($BrowserCommand, "%1"), $URL) ELSE ; Append the URL to the end of the command $BrowserCommand = "$BrowserCommand $URL" ENDIF ; If no URL was specified, remove " -nohome" from the command line IF NOT $URL $BrowserCommand = JOIN (SPLIT ($BrowserCommand, " -nohome"), "") ENDIF ; Open the default browser and return immediately RUN $BrowserCommand ENDFUNCTION
With the above function, if Firefox or Opera or some other browser is installed and set as the default, it will be opened instead of Internet Explorer. If you need to be sure that Internet Explorer is opened, and not some other browser, here’s a function that will open Internet Explorer no matter what.
; Open Internet Explorer FUNCTION OpenInternetExplorer (OPTIONAL $URL) ; Get the path to Internet Explorer $BrowserCommand = READVALUE ("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\IEXPLORE.EXE", "") ; Append the URL to the end of the command $BrowserCommand = "$BrowserCommand $URL" ; Open Internet Explorer and return immediately RUN $BrowserCommand ENDFUNCTION
Here are some examples for using these functions:
; Open the default browser and go to the home page OpenDefaultBrowser ; Open the default browser and go to http://blog.glyff.net/ OpenDefaultBrowser ("http://blog.glyff.net/") ; Open Internet Explorer and go to the home page, even if it isn't the default browser OpenInternetExplorer ; Open Internet Explorer and go to http://blog.glyff.net/, even if it isn't the default browser OpenInternetExplorer ("http://blog.glyff.net/")
