Open selected URL in Browser (on Windows with explorer)

[paulvi]

It is great feature to open Explorer for selected path.

Could you please also open (Eclipse default) Browser for selected URL

Related to Nodeclipse/nodeclipse#23 Add console support for Node.js

[paulvi]

Currently error is displayed, even though Windows Explorer can handle http:// links.

[basti1302]

Yes, Windows Explorer can handle http links but this check is done earlier. It could be disabled if the selected text begins with http or https. Pull Request welcome :-)

[paulvi]

I had no intention to dive into this code so far. I will let you if I do.

[basti1302]

Um, on second thought the change might not be a no-brainer, as I first thought. While it is true that Windows Explorer can handle http-URIs, not every file manger does this. I just tested Nemo (default file manager in Linux Mint) - no luck.

So just disabling the validation check for paths that start with http will be fine for windows users, but less so for users on other OSes.

We might add another action for URIs (like "Open in Browser") or we can abuse the "Open with file manager" action for this and instead try to use the OS' default means of opening a URI in a browser. Not sure how that would work in a cross-platform manner.

[paulvi]

Why not just check if it Windows, than let it go.
Otherwise say "the path cannot be handled by system file manager"

Supporting many OSes is always troublesome. Let this issue be for Windows only.

[paulvi]

Just recalled: on Windows there is start command that lets open anything, including http://

Is there something similar on Linux?

[basti1302]

Yes, there is something like that for Linux (of course it's a different command for each window manager...) and I'm already using that (or "start" on win) for "Start with default system app". Not sure if all of them support URLs.

If not, I would also be okay with passing URLs to Explorer only on Win, as you suggested.

[paulvi]

Looking forward to try in action.

[paulvi]

I though "Hey, what if just to select Open in Default Application".

I tried. The menu item is there, but it returns the same dialog and message.

That is there is just check that prevents StartExplorer from opening http://, mailto:, etc links

[basti1302]

Yes, that is expected. All paths passed to any StartExplorer action are checked if they represent a valid file system location. If not, the action is aborted. That is so to prevent random strings to go into OS commands as parameters. As said before, I'll change that to check for valid URIs also and allow them, too, at least on Windows.