CODEWITHSUNDEEP
visual-studiohyperlink
xofz
xofz

Reputation: 5660

How do I open links in Visual Studio in my web browser and not in Visual Studio?

If there is a URL in a source file comment, I can "CTRL + click to follow link." However, when I do this, the link opens inside Visual Studio. How can I make it open in my web browser--in my case, Google Chrome?

Upvotes: 136

Views: 27923

Answers (6)

christris
christris

Reputation: 31

This works for me. I changed the default browser in Windows.

Windows-Support

or direct link to settings: ms-settings:defaultapps

Upvotes: -1

dylanh724
dylanh724

Reputation: 1018

2019 Update: All the answers are old. There's now a native way to do this in options in VS2019 Community:

Options >> Web Browser

Upvotes: 0

mikesigs
mikesigs

Reputation: 11380

There is an extension that provides this behavior called Open in External Browser. It works in Visual Studio 2012, 2013, 2015 and 2017. (An old version available on GitHub supports Visual Studio 2010.)

Thanks goes to Dmitry for pointing this out in his answer to this similar question.

EDIT: The Visual Studio team is finally starting to work on putting this right into Visual Studio. Status of this feature request just moved from "Under Review" to "Started".

Upvotes: 64

Terrence
Terrence

Reputation: 822

This is an improvement on the macro suggested above by mracoker.

This macro looks for a URL on the current line and does not capture text after the URL as the previous answer did.

Sub OpenURLInChrome()

   ' Select to end of line
   DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection.EndOfLine(True)
   Dim selection As TextSelection = DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection

   ' Find URL within selection
   Dim match = System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Match( _
      selection.Text, ".*(http\S+)")

   Dim url As String = ""
   If (match.Success) Then
      If match.Groups.Count = 2 Then
         url = match.Groups(1).Value
      End If
   End If

   ' Remove selection
   selection.SwapAnchor()
   selection.Collapse()

   If (url = String.Empty) Then
       MsgBox("No URL found")
   End If

   ' Launch chrome with url
   System.Diagnostics.Process.Start( _
      Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData) _
      + "\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe", url)
End Sub

To use: place cursor somewhere before the URL; Run Macro (I mapped to Ctrl-Shift-G)

Upvotes: 5

mracoker
mracoker

Reputation: 886

I could not find a setting for this so I wrote a simple macro that you can use. You can bind this to a key-combo like all macros. This will get the job done until we get a better answer.

Sub OpenURLInChrome()
   'copy to end of line
   DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection.EndOfLine(True)

  'set var
   Dim url As String = DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection.Text

   'launch chrome with url
   System.Diagnostics.Process.Start( _
      Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData) _
      + "\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe", url)
End Sub

Just put your cursor in front of the url and run the macro...

Upvotes: 7

backslash17
backslash17

Reputation: 5390

In VS2008 , just right click on the link and select "Open link in external window". You have to select Chrome as your default browser.

Upvotes: -4

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