How do I open a URL file from the command line?

Montiverdi

I have a four-line URL file OED.url whose first two lines are
[InternetShortcut]
URL=http://www.oed.com/

When I open the runbox and run firefox "<path>\OED.url" or iexplore "<path>\OED.url", the browser launches and displays the desired webpage www.oed.com.
When I run vivaldi "<path>\OED.url", however, the browser launches, but displays only the four lines of the URL file, which achieves nothing.

(And I can't be bothered trying to work out what weird behaviour Edge is exhibiting.)

QUESTION: How do open my URL file with Vivaldi from the command line? I have a stack of URL files, all organised into a directory tree, and before I make the permanent switch to Vivaldi, I need to be able to open these files from the command line.

Vivaldi 2.8.1664.40 (32-bit) on Windows Pro 1903 Build 18362.388

lamarca

Hello there,

As you may Vivaldi Browser is cross platform, which allows a win user helps a mac user and vice-versa. See it helps:

https://peter.sh/experiments/chromium-command-line-switches/

Some switchers were removed and added news one.

Pathduck

I can open URL files by using enter/double click from explorer, does this not work for you? It won't work directly from the Vivaldi exe like the dragon said above.

URL files were and are very much a Microsoft thing, it was never really a standard, and so it's up to developers to care enough to support opening them. For all we know Firefox might drop its support too whenever they feel like.

Montiverdi

Thank you very much, @Gwen-Dragon, for that command, which I had no knowledge of. We need a book on the mysteries of rundll.exe. I have implemented your command in a button, and it works just as it should --- well, almost.

Two questions that it brings up:

The path to the URL file cannot be in " " quotes, even when the path has spaces, otherwise an error is thrown. That was unexpected.
The command does not mention Vivaldi, and seems to launch the webpage in whatever browser is set as default.
QUESTION: Does you command admit some additional flag to control the particular chrome browser that is launched? Then I could specify the Edge browser (which I would never set as default)? Also, my wife may need to install Google Chrome in the future for media purposes, and I would then want to create a button with commands to open URL files in three different chrome browsers.

Since my first post, I actually wrote a script to extract the URL from a URL file, so that I could open the website with Vivaldi or Edge by feeding the URL directly to the browser --- so I do now have a complete solution. But it's a simple task that shouldn't need scripting.

Thank you @Pathduck for clarifying the attitudes (and yes, I know about enter and clicking, but I am wanting to create a compound button that gives me choice of browser). I would warn, however, that the majority of PCs in the world run Windows, and that the last thing Vivaldi should be doing is slinging off at Windows. We all know about Microsoft's present troubles, but URL files are very useful, and are surely accommodated very easily by the Vivaldi programmers. @Gwen-Dragon, it looks as if I should add this to the Feature Requests.

Pathduck

@Montiverdi RunDLL just calls the "openURL" function exported from the ieframe DLL. So any "quirks" would be due to how that function works. I believe it uses IE to parse the file and then launches whatever browser is set as default.

And I wasn't slagging off Windows, in fact I use it as my primary OS and I'm perfectly happy with it. I was just stating that URL files were a MS invention. And it's always been tightly tied to Internet Explorer, as even now in Windows 10, we still need IE functionality to use them.

But do go ahead and add it to feature requests - it's something to consider I think.

Montiverdi

Thanks, @Pathduck. Yes, it's interesting how deeply the IE procedures are embedded in Windows. And apologies for not expressing myself appropriately in the previous post. I will take up your suggestion tomorrow morning and post in the Feature Requests.