Subj : How to launch an external application from Mozilla
To   : netscape.public.mozilla.jseng
From : glin@employees.org (Gary Lin)
Date : Mon Mar 10 2003 08:00 pm

Hi,

I am trying to implement my system in such a way that when user opens
my page in Mozilla and click on a particular link, Mozilla will launch
an external application, say xemacs.  Since this document will always
be located on the local filesystem and my system will include Mozilla
internally, so security won't be such a big issue for me (I can tweak
Mozilla in anyway I wanted to).  I understand Mozilla, like rest of
the browsers, can open application based on MIME type.  But since I do
not want to mess with the exisiting mime type and I am only caring
about opening the application (not opening a document), this doesn't
look so promising to me.  After some research, I discover some posts
suggest me to use javascript to achieve this:

  netscape.security.PrivilegeManager.enablePrivilege('UniversalExecAccess');
  java.lang.Runtime.getRuntime().exec(command);

But this doesn't seem to work for me on Mozilla (I am running 1.2.1). 
I can get the privlege warning dialog, but after I say Yes, the
command is not getting executed.  Any body know why?  Or if you have a
better alternative, please share your insight with me too.  Thank you
all in advance!

-- Gary

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