Answer: opening a web page, sending an email

[Paul N]

I was going to ask a question here, but after much searching I finally
found the answer. I thought I'd post the answer here instead in case
it is of use to anyone else. Any further comments welcome as well.

What I wanted was to know if there were simple functions to do the
following:

a) Start up the default browser if it isn't already running, and show
the web page from a url. The sort of function an email program might
call when the user clicks on a link in an email.

b) Start up the default email program if it isn't already running, and
start writing an email to a provided address. The sort of function a
browser might call when the user clicks on a "mailto:" link on a
webpage.

Anyhow, on Monday I finally hit on the right incantation, and Google
told me about ShellExecute. See, for instance,
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb762153(v=vs.85).aspx
. If you call it with "open" and a url, it opens the web page as
required by (a). And if you call it with "open" and "mailto:(address)"
it creates an email as required by (b).

Hope this is of use to someone.
Paul.