I'm a dev on IE. I believe that mIRC is CoCreateInstance'ing IE (or directly calling IE in another way) to launch URLs. The proper way is to ShellExecute just the url, this respects the user's default browser and allows IE7 to respect a user's tab/window reuse settings.

My apologies if I'm incorrect, I just gave it a once over in the debugger.

Under which version of windows are you seeing this issue? I've tested mIRC under various versions of Windows, using IE6/7 and other browsers and it works fine, other than under Vista where there are issues because of both Virtualization and a change in the way the default browser is set under Vista.

mIRC looks in the classes section in the registry for http settings and launches using ShellExecute or DDE based on the executable/DDE topic in the http definition.

Unfortunately I cannot use a simple ShellExecute the way other applications do because mIRC allows users finer control over the way the browser opens per the Options/IRC/Catcher dialog.

So will the next version of mIRC be Vista-compliant? I am running Vista and have Firefox set as my default browser; however links in mIRC still open in IE7, rather than Firefox, as they should.

Yes, the next version of mIRC will use the new Vista method for detecting the default browser. Unfortunately, the current release of Firefox 2.0.0.1 is not Vista compliant which means that it does not set itself as the default browser correctly under Vista. So there is no guarantee that the next mIRC will detect Firefox as your browser.

As I have mentioned in previous posts however, when I install mIRC 6.21 and Firefox under Vista, mIRC detects Firefox fine for me. You can find discussion of this issue in an earlier Vista-related post.

I am aware of the Firefox 2.0.0.1 issue and am running the 2.0.0.2 RC which fixes this issue; I have confirmed that Firefox is set as the default browser (links in IM programs / HTML files from explorer / etc open in Firefox fine).



I did not actually run the mIRC installer, but merely copied my mIRC directory over from a previous Vista build, so perhaps that is affecting things. I will run the mIRC installer and see if that changes things.

Thank you for your input.

I've just done a clean install of mIRC 6.31 and i'm coming across this problem again..
I have gone to 'start' 'default programs' etc
and Firefox is my default browser, but yet again internet explorer is opening and i can't solve it, this is on vista btw.