Is there any way to create Internet shortcut files that will work with all operating systems (including Mac, Windows, and Linux)? I often switch between Windows and Linux, and I haven't yet found a way to create an internet shortcut file (on the desktop or in a local folder) that is compatible with all operating systems.
asked Jan 18, 2013 at 7:11
4 Answers
I found a reasonable cross-platform solution. This HTML document could be used as a shortcut to stackoverflow.com, and it would immediately redirect to that site when opened from the desktop:
<html>
<body>
<script type="text/javascript">
window.location.href = "http://stackoverflow.com"; //change this to the URL
//you want to redirect to
</script>
</body>
</html>
answered Jan 18, 2013 at 7:33
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1this is such a fantastically simple solution... thank you Jan 29, 2013 at 0:27
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24Why not use
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=http://example.com/">in the<head>instead of relying on javascript? Sep 11, 2014 at 0:23 -
While most browsers will accept that bare-minimum oneliner
.html file, @Evan or the reader can consider this more exhaustive answer. My answer here, where I provide a script that automatically generates.html-Files like this, builds upon that.– CadoizOct 21, 2021 at 10:35 -
Credit to Evan Mattson from the comments.
From W3C, Technique H76: Using meta refresh to create an instant client-side redirect:
The objective of this technique is to enable redirects on the client side without confusing the user. Redirects are preferably implemented on the server side (see SVR1: Implementing automatic redirects on the server side instead of on the client side (SERVER) ), but authors do not always have control over server-side technologies.
Example from the link above:
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>The Tudors</title>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL='http://thetudors.example.com/'" />
</head>
<body>
<p>This page has moved to a <a href="http://thetudors.example.com/">
theTudors.example.com</a>.</p>
</body>
</html>
Basically, a refresh is done after zero seconds (immediately) to the specified URL, before the page content is loaded, and without JavaScript.
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You can consider my answer here, where I provide a script that automatically generates
.html-Files like this.– CadoizOct 21, 2021 at 10:33 -
You can define a file named as following - MyInternetShortcut.url.
It's content should be:
[InternetShortcut]
URL=https://my.amazingsite.com/
This works on Windows and macOS.
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1Maybe your Linux. Opens in text editor on my Linux Mint 17.3 Mate system. Feb 10, 2019 at 19:10
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I have Linux Mint 18.3 and it doesn't work as well. I guess my memory tricked me. It does work on macOS and Windows. I will update the answer. Thank You.– RoyiFeb 10, 2019 at 20:58
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1
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It does work well with many (graphical, modern) Linux distros - and if not, most usual browsers can intrepret it, so you can open the
xyz.urlwith it. I wrote a script provided here that automatically generates url-links like proposed by this answer.– CadoizOct 21, 2021 at 10:30
For ease of use, I wrote a script to generate .url-files like Royi suggested in his answer. Making this script runnable with e.g. chmod +x url_linkscript.sh makes things even more handy. This file contains:
#!/bin/bash
echo "[InternetShortcut]
URL=$1" > "$2"
You can then run it like this: $ url_linkscript.sh "https://my.amazingsite.com/" "result.url". (Depending on your link and file name, this usually also works without the quotes ".)
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This answer could be extended by a
.bat-script that does the same thing from within windows (without the need for a bash compatibility layer).– CadoizOct 21, 2021 at 10:28
.desktop-Files might not fit as well.