i'm not sure i understand your question correctly.
in order to browse the internet, you need a program that can load and display webpages. among many other things, this program also has to allow the user to click on links to go to another webpage. this type of program is called a browser.
so, no, you can't browse without a browser.
i am also interested to learn how you use notepad in xp to 'jump to url'? as far as i know notepad only reads and edits simple text files. sure it can edit html files, but it cannot display html content, images, links, it can't do javascript, it can't store favourites, it can't download stuff etc etc - it's not a browser.