- NAME
- SYNOPSIS
- DESCRIPTION
- ENVIRONMENT
- BUGS

# NAME

ActiveState::Browser - Interface to invoke the web-browser

# SYNOPSIS

      use ActiveState::Browser;
      ActiveState::Browser::open("http://www.activestate.com");

# DESCRIPTION

The ActiveState::Browser module provides an interface to make a web browser pop up showing some URL or file. The following functions are provided:

open( $url )

  This will try to open up a web browser displaying the given URL. The function will croak if the $url can't be resolved or if no suitable browser could be found. The can_open() test can be used to protect against such failure, but note that such a test is not race-proof.

  If the $url is absolute it is passed directly to the browser.

  If the $url is relative it is looked up relative to the directory `$ActiveState::Browser::HTML_DIR`, which defaults to the current directory.

can_open( $url )

  Will return TRUE if we can invoke a browser for the given URL. If the URL is not to a local file, then this always returns TRUE, given that a browser program was found.

# ENVIRONMENT

The AS_BROWSER environment variable can be set to override what browser to use. The string `%s` will be replaced with the URL to open. If no `%s` is present the string is taken as a command to invoke with the URL as the only argument.

The `%s` template was inspired by the BROWSER environment variable suggestion that appear quite dead; see http://www.catb.org/~esr/BROWSER/. Note that the AS_BROWSER is not a colon separated list.

# BUGS

none.