Forums Bug Reports 7.07 and all previous - opening links in IE

If your default browser is IE, any link you double-click on in mIRC will open in a new window rather than a new tab.

By contrast, opening links from outlook, word, mumble, or even doing start > run > "http://www.google.com" all open in a new tab

the only way I can replicate this behaviour manually is by doing start > run > "iexplore.exe http://www.google.com" - if this is what mIRC is doing it's The Wrong Thing - it should just open the URL and let the OS work out what the browser is (as per http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307382 or similar)

The default double click behavior on links is to open a new window. If you want to open a new tab, then right click and choose Open.

As far as I can tell, mIRC is doing the right thing. Unfortunately it looks like both IE and Firefox are not interpreting the WWW_OpenURL DDE message correctly. Both ignore the parameter, indicating whether a new window should be opened or not, that mIRC passes in the WWW_OpenURL DDE message. In the case of IE, it always opens a new window, and in the case of Firefox, it always opens a new tab.

Previous versions of IE and Firefox did interpret the WWW_OpenURL DDE message correctly, however it seems they stopped doing so when they added tab support. If anyone can find a way to make IE or Firefox open a new window or a new tab, let me know.

If a browser is not currently open (as determined by a failed DDE request), mIRC passes the URL request to Windows which decides which browser to use.

Update: when I start > run > "http://www.google.com", I see the same behaviour. With IE, it always opens a new window, even if an IE window is currently open, and with Firefox, it always opens a new tab.

Update2: I just tested a number of applications, including several Microsoft applications (Word, Excel, Visual Studio, Outlook, etc.), and they all display the same behaviour as mIRC.

Just a note with this. In IE, double clicking for me opened up a new window. Right click + Open = New tab (assuming IE is open already). This seems to be okay to me.

I just tried it in Firefox and double clicking gets me a new tab if Firefox is open, and Right click + Open also opens a new tab, but does not bring Firefox into focus for some reason. Double clicking or Right click > Open in new browser will bring it into focus and create the tab. It doesn't seem possible to open a new window. That seems incorrect to me.

It looks like both browsers have Tab settings in their Options dialogs that determine whether links are opened in tabs or new windows. I have not been able to find a way of overriding these settings with DDE, which is the standard method for opening links.

Firefox does support command line options -new-tab and -new-window (not sure which version they started supporting these - they may only work for recent versions of Firefox) but if I used these they would only work for Firefox and not for any other browser.

indeed

no matter what I do, double-clicking always opens in new window
if I right-click and do "open", it opens in a new window if I have IE set to open links from other programs in a new window; it opens in a new tab if I have IE set to open links from other programs in a new tab. When set to the second, right-clicking a link in mIRC and selecting "open in new browser" does still open in a new window

to me it seems like the double-click-a-link behaviour should be changed to do whatever right-click-and-select-open currently does

What about using COM?

If you open the Options/IRC/Catcher dialog, do you have the option "Open a new window" enabled in the "Web Browser" box? If you disable it, does that resolve your issue? This is a global option in mIRC and affects all features that open links. This option was added at a time when browsers did not support tabs - it probably should be disabled by default now, so that mIRC leaves the new tab/window behavior up to the default browser tab settings.

ah, indeed

with that option un-ticked, link-opening respects my browser's wishes (i.e. whether it opens in a new window, or a new tab, depends on the option set)

thanks for that