Windows 9X Special Interest Group

by John S. Krill jskrill@jps.net

Background

When Microsoft released version 4 of it’s Internet browser it also made changes to many of the desktop tools. For instance when you click on the ‘Start’ button one of the fixed (You can’t remove it.) items is titled ‘Favorites.’ When you select one of the items from ‘Favorites’ it starts Microsoft’s browser and this may not be your browser of choice.

The Windows 95 taskbar can be configured to include several type of toolbars. One of those is the ‘Address’ toolbar. If you insert a Web address and hit enter you will launch Microsoft’s browser.

What follows is information that will allow you to select the browser you want to use and not the one Microsoft thinks is best for you.

First

Backup your registry.

What do I Change?

When you double click on a file the actions that Windows 95 takes is dependent on information supplied in the Registered File Types. You can change or edit this information so that Windows 95 does what you want it to do. I’m going to use http sites (WWW sites) as an example. When you examine the list of registered file types you will see that there is information about gopher, FTP, mail and news and a couple of others that I have no information on. All but Hypertext Document and Internet Shortcuts, starts with ‘URL:’

The four Registered File Types we are going to look at are:

Hypertext Document

Internet Shortcuts

URL:Hypertext Transfer Protocol

URL:Hypertext Transfer Protocol With Privacy.

Editing Registered File Types

First lets have ‘Internet Shortcuts’ start the Netscape browser. Start windows Explorer. From the ‘View’ menu list select ‘Folder Options …’ Now select the ‘File Types’ tab. From the list of ‘Registered File Types’ scroll down until you find ‘Internet Shortcuts.’ Select ‘Internet Shortcuts’ and click the ‘Edit’ button. Now select ‘open’ from the list and click the ‘Edit’ button.

Now comes the fun part (See Figure 1.) You will notice in the box labeled ‘Application used to perform action:’ has Microsoft’s browser. Click on the ‘Browse’ button and locate the Netscape browser. That’s it. Now when you double-click on an Internet Short-cut you will launch the Netscape browser.

Now use the same procedure with Hypertext Document, URL:Hypertext Transfer Protocol, and URL:Hypertext Transfer Protocol With Privacy file types to change the browser.

You will notice that URL:Hypertext Transfer Protocol, and URL:Hypertext Transfer Protocol With Privacy also have DDE information. I disabled DDE in both types with no apparent problems. I am trying to get information from Netscape about how to modify the DDE data for Netscape’s browser.

Happy Browsing

Now that URL:Hypertext Transfer Protocol, and URL:Hypertext Transfer Protocol With Privacy have been changed whenever you select a Web site from the Favorites in the Start button menu or from the Address toolbar the Netscape browser will start.