Wednesday, April 10, 2013

OptiBrowser: Managing Links in a Multi-Browser World

As a web developer I have several browsers installed on my PC. This is not only for testing apps on different browsers but allows you to run the same app as a different user at the same time - something many web apps don't offer because they store session state in a cookie which is shared among windows of the same browser.

That's all fine but what about the default browser? Each OS allows you one and only one default browser. This means that when you click a link in an email it will always open in your default browser. If you're like me, and your default browser is internet explorer (don't ask), you find yourself copying the link and pasting it into Chrome.

Enter OptiBrowser!



OptiBrowser is your new default browser and yet it's not a browser at all. It's simply a menu which let's you choose which browser you want to start the link you just clicked in. Press <Enter> and it will start in your default browser. Of course this only applies to links you click outside of the browser - links clicked in a browser say in that browser.

Check it out on GitHub (cawoodm/optibrowser) and, if you have any issues post them there. It's written in C# (.NET 4) and compiled and tested under Windows 7 so far. Feel free to fork and improve.

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