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I'm looking for an add-on or another way to have Firefox (or Chrome or anything else really) open an external program when clicking on certain links and send the URL I clicked to that program.

I know I can set a default action for the type of file that I want to play but then Firefox downloads the whole file and passes the path to the external program. I don't want the browser to download it, I just want to pass the URL.

I have a simple webserver with a directory listing of a bunch of movies. I want to be able to click on one of these movies on another pc and have the browser open Media Player Classic with the link I clicked as a parameter. I do not want to have the browser download the file then play it. I want to invoke MPC with the URL as a parameter.

I can open the link in MPC and it does what I want. I can start MPC with the URL as a parameter and it does what I want. I can also drag the link from the browser to an existing MPC window and it does what I want (This is what I'm doing now with MPC set to "always on top"). What I really want is to click the links and have the program start without downloading the file locally, probably by looking at the extension.

I will eventually look into setting up some kind of streaming service on the host pc, but for now I'd like to do it simply.

I tried a Firefox add-on called "Open Link in Program" (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/olip/) but it does not send the complete link to the external program, only the domain part, so it's useless.

Basically, MPC has no problem streaming links from the webserver by being invoked with the URL as a parameter. How can I send the URL to the program?

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  • My question to you: how does the add-on/browser know WHICH links to pass to external app & which not to? I'm thinking a URI (Windows GUI calls them file protocols) like mailto opening default email program with an email address (and subject) inserted, but that is a special URL so you'd likely need to modify the webserver for this solution or we'd need to see what the URL looks like (FTP://?)
    – gregg
    Dec 26, 2019 at 19:25

2 Answers 2

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have you tried? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/open-with/ it adds a context menu item that runs your predefined program with the full url. so you don't even have to enter the page(youtube links and such).

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External Application Button

External Application Button allows you to define highly customizable toolbar button and context menu items for Firefox browser. Using this application for instance you can send current page to Chrome, Opera, or Internet explorer browsers. Or send selected text to a text editor like Notepad++ or Sublime Text. It is even possible to directly send image URLs to a photo editor of your choice or send download links to an external download manager like FlashGot extension in Firefox.

Note that in order for this application to work, there is a minimal native client that needs to be installed manually. Instruction on how to install the minimal client is shown once an application is added to the list. For more info watch the video tutorials or visit add-on's homepage.

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