Posts made by agych

@burnout426

I've tried it properly this time, with RegisterFirefoxPortable and all the stuff, and got 2 issues:

• When the browser_launcher is pinned to taskbar (by drag'n'dropping the browser_launcher or its shortcut) and is launched from there, Opera/Vivaldi are opened in a new taskbar "toast", instead of the place of the pinned launcher. In other words I get pinned icon in one place, and the opened browser in the end of the taskbar.
  I had to fix it by pinning the opened browsers (via taskbar), which resulted in the original browser executables being pinned, and then manually modifying each pinned shortcut so that they point to browser_launcher. So far it works, hope they will not disappear from the taskbar after reboot (sometimes it happens when the pinned shortcut was modified).

• When browser_launcher is registered as a default program with RegisterFirefoxPortable and the .reg fix, it doesn't appear in "Default Programs" in control panel. Have no idea why...
  I have checked the registry and saw that RegisterFirefoxPortable did its job like it supposed to, so it is not this part that fails.
  I would assume that the original launcher has some sort of signature or something, "Default Programs" checks each registered default program if it is signed or not (while fetching the list of programs), and hides those that are not signed.
  I got it work by renaming browser_launcher.exe to whatever, renaming the original launcher to browser_launcher.exe, doing the RegisterFirefoxPortable procedure, and then renaming the launchers back. After that the browser entry is still in "Default Programs", opening web-files launches browser_launcher.exe, and the browser runs with all the arguments.

After getting these two fixed, the launcher works great so far, I'm now using it with Opera and Vivaldi (both are standalone/portable).

Did you have these issues?

Thanks, works great!
This is a useful piece of software, have you thought about pushing it to github?

I don't have experience with C++, but have looked at the code a bit and got a couple of ideas for improvement:

• The configurable browser exe name is indeed a Very good idea. This way one single launcher can be used with all chromium-based browsers. No need to have one for Opera, another for Vivaldi, and third for Chrome.
• Would be great to have the launcher_args file name taken from your launcher exe name, instead of being hardcoded as "launcher_args.txt". I mean, for example, if one downloads your launcher and renames it to "super-cool-launcher-from-hell.exe", it would read the args from "super-cool-launcher-from-hell.txt". One advantage of this approach is that it will be always clear that both files belong to the same software - your launcher. Another advantage is that both files will be one after another in the file manager (sorted by file name).

@burnout426 said in Read Command-Line Arguments from a File on Startup:

I made an example launcher.exe replacement that supports reading command-line arguments from a file next to it. See here. There's a readme in the zip file.

Actually, there could be a better way of using your solution:

1. Download RegisterFirefoxPortable:
   http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/register-firefox-portable-with-default-programs-in-vista/
   (the program name is a little bit bullshit, as it can register ANY custom browser setup as the default Windows browser, the only issue is the registered browser name, which is always "Firefox")
2. Apply this program to your launcher replacement.
3. I made a simple name-fix solution, download it from here:
   https://nofile.io/f/Mnhw0gCYCKV/ChangeDefaultBrowser+Fix.zip
   Apply the one that corresponds your browser name (I tested it on Opera and Vivaldi).
4. Go to Control Panel -> Default Programs and choose the registered EXE as the default browser.
   Voilà!

So potentially this solution can completely eliminate the need to rename something in the browser program folder and to mess up with file replacements on each update.
The only thing is that your EXE should use the stock "launcher.exe" instead of the renamed "reallauncher.exe".

PS: Could you compile another version of your launcher for Vivaldi ("vivaldi.exe")?

When user needs to launch Opera with non-default parameters (cache size/location, Flash plugin location, process mode, whatever it is), the only way of doing that is to launch it with CMD switches.
That means the user has to remember to update all browser shortcuts (including Start Menu and pinned Taskbar shortcuts). And also, when the browser is launched for example by clicking an url link on the Desktop, the browser will of course start without all these switches.
In other words, having launch parameters implemented only as CMD arguments is not very cool.
It would really be awesome if it was possible to store necessary launch parameters for example in launcher.ini file, and have launcher.exe reading it every time Opera starts.
This is a really convenient way - set up once and forget.