How to launch an application from a browser

Question

Is it possible to launch an application from a browser  I am not talking about opening a file from a browser  like open a PDF with Adobe Reader   but rather opening a new  blank  instance of an application that is installed on the user s machine   Hypothetical situation  User browses a website that lists computers that can be managed via RDP  He clicks on a link to 192 168 1 10  that link opens Microsoft RDP client  mstsc exe  with that ip address already filled out   I am talking strictly about Windows universe    Is that thing even doable outside of ActiveX and IE   Is it wise to attempt this in IE with ActiveX

User · Accepted Answer

You can t really  launch an application  in the true sense   You can as you indicated ask the user to open a document  ie a PDF  and windows will attempt to use the default app for that file type   Many applications have a way to do this   For example you can save RDP connections as a  rdp file   Putting a link on your site to something like this should allow the user to launch right into an RDP session     lt a href  MyServer1 rdp  gt Server 1 lt  a gt

User · Answer

We use a sonicwall vpn  It launches a java applet that launches mstc with all the credentials setup  You really can t do this without a java applet or activex plugin   Microsoft uses this technique itself on their small business server for getting inside the network  I wouldn t say it is a terrible idea  as long as platform independence isn t important

User · Answer

The correct method is to register your custom URL Protocol in windows registry as follows    HKEY CLASSES ROOT customurl     Description here   URL Protocol       HKEY CLASSES ROOT customurl shell    HKEY CLASSES ROOT customurl shell open    HKEY CLASSES ROOT customurl shell open command       C   Path To Your EXE  ExeName exe      1      Once the above keys and values are added  from the web page  just call  customurl   parameter1 xxx amp parameter2 xxx    You will receive the entire url as the argument in exe  which you need to process inside your exe  Change  customurl  with the text of your choice

User · Answer

I achieved the same thing using a local web server and PHP  I used a script containing shell exec to launch an application locally   Alternatively  you could do something like this    lt a href  file   C  Windows notepad exe  gt Notepad lt  a gt

User · Answer

Some applications launches themselves by protocols  like itunes with  itms     links  I don t know however how you can register that with windows

User · Answer

You can use SilverLight to launch an application from the browser  this will work only on IE and Firefox  newer versions of chrome don t support this   Example code here

[windows] How to launch an application from a browser?

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