DonationCoder.com Software > Post New Requests Here

IDEA: an app to stop installers from launching web browsers and opening pages

(1/3) > >>

Brian De Braganza:
My last wishlist post for today  ;D

You know the situation: you have shut down most running processes, including your web browser(s), to help prevent conflicts and problems while installing a new application and to free up resources. Without asking for permission, the installer launches a web browser and opens a web page - perhaps the help web page or homepage - or the uninstaller launches a web browser to open a page with a survey asking "why?", etc.

If, like me, you often have 40 or more saved tabs in Firefox (using TabsMixPlus), you know how annoying this can be, waiting for Firefox to launch and open all those tabs and then open a page you weren't interested in visiting in the first place. Grrr. No software installer/uninstaller should ever launch a web browser without presenting an option first to deny that behaviour, if preferred - but they do. Often the wretched installer app will not progress further until it receives a positive response from the browser with a connection to the launched URL.

Does anyone know of or can come up with a small application that would prevent software installers/uninstallers from automatically launching a browser? Obviously, it would have to be restricted narrowly to installers/uninstallers because there are lots of applications from which one actually wants to launch a URL.

I don't know if such an intervention is even possible, but I hope it is.

Brian De B

MilesAhead:
I wasn't able to find any smooth way to detect if a url is being opened by an installer. A kludge to do it may be to write a small batch file where you would put the name of the installer as param. The batch would launch BrowserChooser program, which would prompt you if it's not the default browser.  Click OK to set it as default.  Then the batch would run the installer.  When BrowserChooser pops up because the installer launched a url, just kill it.

Then run any browser set to detect default on startup.  Firefox can be set to do this.  Chromium does it by default.  Click to set that as default and BrowserChooser won't pop up anymore.

Something smoother like hooking all calls to ShellExecute run the risk of messing up your system program launches.  Maybe skwire can conceive of something more macro rather than the BrowserChooser hack. On the plus side you should be able to use the same batch file for install or uninstall.  Doesn't really matter. You are just changing default browser before and after running some program.

app103:
You could try mouser's BrowserTraySwitch. Pay careful attention to what he had to say at the bottom of the page.

Ath:
There's only one real way to eventually get rid of that behavior: Complaints at the suppliers e-mail address, forum, guestbook, support-line, etc.

Being around the Inno Setup newgroups for years, this has been discussed often and long, and the general consensus over there is: If a web-page is to be shown, it should be optional (using a checkbox), and If it's opened, it should use the system default browser.
So there is hope that more and more Inno Setup installers give the user the option to open a web-page, instead of just doing that without asking (Skype and Oracle Java installers come to mind >:()

MilesAhead:
For me the annoying part is when you upgrade and the installer insists you first uninstall the old version. Then it pops up a web page asking you why you are uninstalling.  Duh!!

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page