Can I force a link to open in a specific browser?

Question

I have designed a website using Firefox and am now looking to integrate a softphone into the webpage, but unfortunately it is made with ActiveX, so Firefox won't support it.

I have tried opening my page in IE9, and it looks a mess because I've used CSS3 for a lot of it and haven't coded it for different browsers because we will only be using Firefox within the office.

Is there a way that I can tell my page in Firefox to specifically open a new page in Internet Explorer and just have the softphone in there? Or is there a way to get ActiveX running in Firefox with a plugin or something?

Just a suggestion, you really should make your website functional on all browsers. — JohnP, May 04 '11 at 09:38
No, you can't let Firefox open another browser (even not another program): imagine the security risks that such possibilities would imply. BTW, just spotted another [alot](http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html). — Marcel Korpel, May 04 '11 at 09:38
Lots of people don't even have Internet Explorer installed. And lots of those that do aren't going to agree to the *Click OK to allow ActiveX control access to anything on your PC* and then also agree to the follow up *Are you sure you want to do this dangerous thing?* dialog. — Quentin, May 04 '11 at 09:40
Making it functional across other browsers is something for the future, but for now its not important for us. This isnt a webpage that is going to be available to the public, just a few people in an office — Daniel H, May 04 '11 at 09:43

VSO · Answer 1 · 2021-07-29T12:47:41.093

10

You can open a link in Microsoft Edge from any browser by adding microsoft-edge: in front of the url in the HREF.

<a href="microsoft-edge:http://www.google.com">EDGE (works)</a>

I don't know how to get it to work in other browsers though. My team and I spent quite a bit of time on it and couldn't find a raw HTML/JavaScript solution.

edited Jul 29 '21 at 12:47

answered Nov 17 '20 at 14:46

VSO

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For me, the link won't open if I'm already on Edge. Is that a normal behavior? – Bando Jun 16 '22 at 13:46
I can confirm that the link doesn't open for me in Edge as of right now. That's pretty unexpected for me. Let us know if you come up with a solution. I assume an update change something, since it would have been an unacceptable solution for me at the time I was looking at this. – VSO Jun 16 '22 at 20:22
At the moment, I've checked several articles and I do not find any solid solution. My workaround for the moment will be to add a function to check the browser at the launch of my application. – Bando Jun 17 '22 at 09:07
It also does not open coming from Chrome – mrk Aug 09 '22 at 11:57
@mrk Try right-clicking and clicking "Open Link in a new Tab" - it will prompt you to open Edge. With that said, this is not a solution that can be used in prod. – VSO Dec 06 '22 at 17:54

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 12 '12 at 14:29

It really depends on your exact situation.

If you are targeting multiple users outside a corporate network this is hardly possible to achieve. However, if you are targeting your company's network it's possible to do this using custom protocol.

Your link then would look like: ie://opens_in_ie.com

You'll have to make changes to registry of target computers though. More info about custom protocols is available here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa767914%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

In most cases, system administrator can do this remotely.

score 7 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 29 '13 at 20:06

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IETab V2 will let you open a tab within Firefox that runs the IE engine.

Once installed, you can force a link to open with IE by formatting the URL or bookmark like this:

chrome://ietab2/content/reloaded.html?url=http://domain.com

answered Jan 29 '13 at 20:06

Tony

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score 7 · Accepted Answer · answered May 04 '11 at 09:37

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I don't think you can open a IE window from firefox, but you can easily build a firefox plugin based on your activex using http://code.google.com/p/ff-activex-host/

answered May 04 '11 at 09:37

ariel

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I'd be amazed if that wasn't a Windows-only plugin. – Quentin May 04 '11 at 09:41
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activex is windows only... to make it cross platform he would have to rewrite the whole activex component – ariel May 04 '11 at 09:47
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uhm... Good as an answer but very bad as an idea – gd1 May 04 '11 at 13:14

score 6 · Answer 5 · answered Jan 04 '13 at 15:09

It's somewhat specific, but I created an internal site at work, and I wanted to link to another internal site that only works in IE. To do this, I created/defined my own application protocol in the registry. Then I added to my links the protocol header. This is similar to what apple does when you click a link and it opens iTunes. The downside to this approach, however, is that users will have to install the registry modification for it to work... like I said, it's really a solution for a very specific scenario.

score -2 · Answer 6 · edited Jul 06 '21 at 07:14

Same answer as from chuck wallace

If you want to start from for example in Internet Explorer, go to C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe and create a shortcut to the Desktop. When you check the properties from this created shortcut, you will see the Target: C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe.

Now you can place the shortcut from the website, behind the Target. It will show something like this: C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe www.nu.nl. Or this C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe https://stackoverflow.com. This way it opens IE first and then the website.

Can I force a link to open in a specific browser?

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