[New-bugs-announce] [issue10799] Improve webbrowser.open doc (and, someday, behavior?)
Terry J. Reedy
report at bugs.python.org
Fri Dec 31 04:47:31 CET 2010
New submission from Terry J. Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu>:
webbrowser.open (and two aliases):
1. document return value, which seems to be: True if a browser tab or window is opened, regardless of whether or not the url is found; False otherwise.
2. document that (on Windows, at least) the default browser only gets used if a non .htm(l) url starts with 'www' or 'http:'.
This is true because os.startfile(url) apparently only works if above is true, as required for the Start/Run box to recognize an entry as a url.
In particular, I have Firefox as default and 'www.google.com' and 'http://bugs.python.org' get opened in Firefox (new tab as requested). However, 'google.com' and 'bugs.python.org' open with IE after some delay. [Start/run either opens with Firefox or reports 'cannot find'.]
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In the longer run, what I would really like is for webbrowser to be better at using the default or finding executables.
I thought of adding 'http://' if not present but that would disable opening files in a file browser.
I suspect there is a registry entry but do not know what it is. That would also pick up new browswers like Chrome.
It seems to me that the current behavior is a 'limitation' in this code:
# Detect some common Windows browsers, fallback to IE
iexplore = os.path.join(os.environ.get("PROGRAMFILES", "C:\\Program Files"),
"Internet Explorer\\IEXPLORE.EXE")
for browser in ("firefox", "firebird", "seamonkey", "mozilla",
"netscape", "opera", iexplore):
if _iscommand(browser):
register(browser, None, BackgroundBrowser(browser))
Firefox is not being recognized as a command because _iscommand('firefox') does not not see firefox.exe as an executable because it only checks _isexecutable() in the hodgepodge list of paths in PATH. At one time (but no longer), executables were ofter put in c:/windows, which by default is in PATH.
Since you hardcoded the default real path for iexplore (C:\\Program Files\\"Internet Explorer\\IEXPLORE.EXE"), you could do the same for other programs:
firefox = os.path.join(os.environ.get("PROGRAMFILES", "C:\\Program Files"), "Mozilla Firefox\\firefox.exe")
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assignee: georg.brandl
components: Library (Lib)
messages: 124949
nosy: georg.brandl, terry.reedy
priority: normal
severity: normal
stage: needs patch
status: open
title: Improve webbrowser.open doc (and, someday, behavior?)
versions: Python 3.2
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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue10799>
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