Browser Chooser

Project Description

Browser Chooser is a small tool acting as the default browser allowing you to choose what browser to open the link in. It gives you the flexibility to choose what browser to use for any given task. It is developed in VB.Net and geared towards Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Find out more about the project, including discussions and issue trackers at the Browser Chooser CodePlex page.

Download

This project is released under the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2) license and its source code as well as the latest binary release is hosted at CodePlex. Visit the links below to get your hands on Browser Chooser!

Binary Release

(get the latest version of Browser Chooser)

Source Code

(you can check out the source code at any time)

Screenshots

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Nark CUrse

You haven’t included Flock or Opera browsers
Jan Ole Peek

The browser are customizable but I hadn’t thought to include a Flock icon. It’s not finished yet. It works perfectly but it’s a little rough around the edges still
lod3n

This looks cool, when are you going to release it?
http://www.tuxmedia.tv Ole

Going to have to find a little bit of time to polish it. Might do it rather
soon if I can stop procrastinating
WhACKO

Love the idea for this!
But I have a few suggestions:
1. Make the browser settings portable, save the ini in the same folder as the .exe
2. Don't compress the icons in the exe, make an option to load icons

If you implement this things, you are my hero, and you've earned yourself a faithful follower and a permanent place in my utils folder.
http://www.tuxmedia.tv Ole

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll see if I can get them added sometime soon.
Name

Awesome app. Really saves me a lot of trouble and time. Thanks friend.
http://www.tuxmedia.tv Ole

You're most welcome There'll be in update in a day or so with some
improvements so stay tuned to the Codeplex site for a new release.
Name

I was wondering if you might be able to help me. I love the idea of what your program does and would love to use it but am unable to get it set as the default browser. When I click the button “Make Default Browser” I get an error message that says

Problem writing or reading Registry:

Access to the registry key 'HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/BrowserChooserHTML' is denied.

I went looking in my registry for that location and was unable to find it so I did a little reading and found a web page that said to change your default browser within the registry on Windows Vista to go to

1. HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsShellAssociationsUrlAssociat ionshttpUserChoice
and
2. HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsShellAssociationsUrlAssociat ionshttpsUserChoice

so I checked those locations and was able to find them. So I was wondering if the one that was mentioned in the error message is the location for Windows 7 and the others of course for Windows Vista. If so then I assume I can change these manually but I don't know what to change them to, for example “IE.HTTP” for Internet Explorer or “Firefox.Url” for Firefox.

I wouldn't be suprised if I'm way off here since my computer skills leave something to be desired but if I happen to be right I would very much appreciate it if you could do an update that works for Vista or if you could let me know what the “Progid” should be set to so that I may do it for myself. Thanks in advance. And of course if I'm way off then I'm sorry to have waisted your time.
http://sam.haslers.info/ Sam Hasler

Nice program, I'd been thinking of writing something just like this for a while.

I'd like to be able to open several links without having to select the browser each time. A feature where you could set it to use a particular browser for the next hour would be useful. Or if you could get it to automatically open up the link using the last browser selected if one isn't chosen after 10 seconds.

It would also be nice if it didn't have to restart to see changes applied.
http://www.tuxmedia.tv Ole

Hi Sam, I've had a few comments like that so far. Not sure how I'd implement that right now but I'll add it to the list of feature requests. Thanks!
http://www.tuxmedia.tv Ole

Are you running the app as an administrator? I don't have a Vista machine handy but if you could confirm that you're running as admin and if it's still a problem, you could file an issue in the issue tracker at the CodePlex site. Thanks!
https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawnNc-faWg0wR1Y2t5N6Kx_9G75qBhqKqJg TysonJ

Fantastic app! It's so useful for me!!
JonnyMcM

This is a cool app, but it doesn't work very well for me. It doesn't set as default browser when I click the button, and it wont run Chrome or Firefox. It runs IE fine, but I never use IE. I think the problem with Chrome and Firefox may be that I use command line switches with each of them, and added them to the locations, is that the issue? If so, is there any chance you could add support for them. BTW, I'm on XP, if that makes any difference.
http://www.tuxmedia.tv Ole

The problem lies more with XP, at least as far as the default browser is
concerned. I run Chrome and Firefox fine, so I'm not sure what the problem
is. Any error messages?
JonnyMcM

I'm pretty sure the issue is the command line switches, which I just noticed is a commented issue [2261] and you said you're working on it. Hope you get it working, and then I'll just manually set it as default browser, thats no problem.
http://www.tuxmedia.tv Ole

Yes you were right. I've fixed the command line switches now and it'll be
fixed in the next release, which should be fairly soon.
war59312

Hi,

Nice app, though some default icons for web file types would be nice?

For example icons for .htm and .html files.

Running Vista SP2. The icons are just a blank white icon. Ugly.

Thanks,

Will
http://www.tuxmedia.tv Ole

Really? On my system it turns them into the browser chooser icon. Could you
file this as an issue on the codeplex site and we'll have a look at it for a
future release.
http://www.war59312.com/ Will

OK I was able to force an icon refresh by running “Default Programs” from the start menu and picking “Set your default programs” and then “Browser Chooser” and finally clicking on “Set this program as default”.

So yeah it does do it but seems Vista does not always refresh its icon cache correctly. Perhaps you could find a way to force an icon cache refresh when the user decides to set it as default using the option to do just that in the app. Just a thought, so others users don't see this. This bug in windows is back from win95 sadly..
war59312

Yes that was me. Weird comment system. Never remembers me.
http://www.war59312.com/ war59312

Odd! First time it posted under my account and now its doing it as guest. Really strange..
Nelson

HI there! Neat idea, but doesn't seem to play well with XP. I know it was made for Vista and Win 7, but I thought I'd give it a whirl on XP anyway. Not a happy program, I'm sorry to report. Wonder if it could be made to work so that if one right clicked on a link, a choice of browsers would appear? Cool application: wish I could get it to work for me…
http://www.janolepeek.com Jan Ole Peek

Hi Nelson, try the steps outlined here to set it as the default browser in
XP: http://browserchooser.codeplex.com/Thread/View….
Nelson

I tried that link and followed the instructions as best I could (could not find the config.ini file) and configured Browser Chooser as instructed. No luck so far (maybe I'm missing something?)… I'll try again in the morning.
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly.
Nelson
http://www.janolepeek.com Jan Ole Peek

All you really need to do is to install Browser Chooser, launch it,
configure the options (less the default browser button, since it doesn't
work in XP) and then set it as the default browser using the “set default
browser” application linked to in those instructions.
Nelson

That did the trick! Thanks very much once again!
Nelson
http://www.janolepeek.com Jan Ole Peek

Not a problem. The next version will support XP default browser setting.
I've already got it working, just need to tidy up and improve the visual
look under XP a bit. Kinda ugly all black like that.
Nelson

That did the trick! Thanks very much once again!
Nelson
http://www.janolepeek.com Jan Ole Peek

Not a problem. The next version will support XP default browser setting.
I've already got it working, just need to tidy up and improve the visual
look under XP a bit. Kinda ugly all black like that.
Pingback: Browser Chooser - Links in unterschiedlichen Browsern
http://twitter.com/demuxdispatches Dave Thorne

just started to use your great tool but beingan XP user did stump me for awhile but downloading and using DefaultBrowser http://wareseeker.com/download/defaultbrowser-1… sorted out the problems fine. I have blogged about it here http://demuxdispatches.blogspot.com/2010/08/eve…
thanks
Dave
http://www.janolepeek.com Jan Ole Peek

Thanks for the blog post Glad you enjoy the app!
http://twitter.com/kreisky kreisky

Neat app! Thanks! Now a question, what is the default icon size for the browsers and should it be .png or maybe .jpg? Asking since i am trying to ad an icon in the custom section for Comodo dragon! thanks again!
http://www.janolepeek.com Jan Ole Peek

Definitely png is preferred. The default icon size I’ve been using is 75×80,
I believe.
http://twitter.com/kreisky kreisky

Thanks!
http://www.facebook.com/elangeland Erik Langeland

How about storing a list of preferred browser for various frequently-used domains, so that those always open immediately in their preferred browser? In terms of Sam Hasler’s suggestion, you could allow the user to specify a preferred browser, and open any link in that browser after a timeout expires.
http://www.janolepeek.com Jan Ole Peek

Hi guys,
there is a feature that will do that, in a way. You can add a list of
domains to each browser in the options and those will then open
automatically in that browser. For example, I have “microsoft.com” in the
“URLs” field under the options for my IE entry.