Opening programs from browsers on windows
These days a website that opens an app is pretty common although this feature does not have any kind of user interface or accounting
A uri is the start of a url, for example, https.
mailto:// has been around for as long as the internet for email and call:// since the dawn of smartphones. These uri’s send the address as a parameter (text after the path and file for the app, seperated with spaces) to open the application and it saves you a few clicks
Many applications will show you these parameters by opening it from the terminal with application.exe /? Or application.exe –help
In 2009 while in a helpdesk role, I was told doing this was impossible. So I made a script and some registry entries that opens applications and sends the contents of the link, like the ip address and user name, to be formatted and sent as a parameter to putty, vnc and others.
I made a php/JavaScript intranet site using multiple mysql databases to scan networks and populate the database with ports used and the appropriate links for every client in the region. It was similar to modern managed service providers software for internal use
At the time, Mac and Linux were handling things like ssh and vnc but windows applications had little documentation about how to use it. Most software had to be opened and an address and protocol entered, nothing came with those crucial registry entries.
Now it is a component of most software packages but in the days of Windows XP it was up to the user and now, a majority of them can be handled with winscp and most vnc clients
The real magic happens when you start making your own. Automating tasks that require a command line parameter or address can be a click away with as many parameters as you need
An application or script can be used to proxy to other programs using the same method as these uri’s can be entered anywhere, the address bar, run prompt, bookmark, shortcut or command line. They can even be separated or delimited with a , or _ for even more functionality
I wrote a python script to view and edit them for windows which shows the contents of the registry and allows you to add your own if you have administrator access to the system and backup and restore registry files aswell