http equivalent of "about:blank" ??

[MilesAhead]

I know you can open a blank page with about:blank, but if you try to do this from inside a program often you get an error. I'm wondering if there's an http "magic word" that means the browser's home page?

It would be nice if you could just do something like
start about:home or start HomePageWildCard
in a command prompt
to open the default browser to its home page.

That way you wouldn't need to know which exe is the default browser.
(Obviously the user can just click the browser icon but I'm talking about
launching from a utility running on the user's system.)

 

[osholt]

Hi Miles Ahead, I'm not sure this is exactly what you're looking for but take a gander at About: URI scheme.

It tells you all you need to no about about:.

Also in IE about:Home will bring up your homepage, unfortunately I think this is IE only.

Oli

 

[MilesAhead]

I found the Wiki page. For some reason if you paste in the link and click it, you get a bad address error page. I just did it too and got the same thing. Weird.

Anyway, the way IP has 127.0.0.1 you would think http would have something like
"http://here" or "http://startup"
or something.

No big deal. The other way of doing it is to get .html file associated exe or pull from the registry. Just a pita though.

 

[Jacee]

What happens if you press Alt + M ?

 

[MilesAhead]

I could do it though a macro but I'd prefer simple ShellExecute from inside a program.
For example if I do ShellExecute("http://www.microsoft.com") the default browser will come up and try to go to MS site. I just thought there may be a "magic address" that means whatever is set as home page.. like ShellExecute("http:about:home") or something.

It's not that important.. but to use FindExecutable to get the exe file associated with .html then you have to use an existing file. So I'd have to put in a dummy web page like "nothing.html" and call FindExecutable("nothing.html" with the rest of the pararms) to get back something like "C:\Program Files\Opera\Opera.exe" or look in the registry. Would just be easier if there was a magic word for "home page" like in TCP/IP you can connect to "this computer" using 127.0.0.1

btw if you do ShellExecute("http://127.0.0.1") it tries to connect to "this computer" but if you don't have a web server running it times out.