Open external links in new window instead of default browser

[felipemeamaral]

I know some people could think it will not reproduce the same feeling as using a native app, but in my case I want it to:

• open external links on another window or tab

'Cause I want to isolate these links from browser.

Anyone succeeded on achieve this?

Tried the process explained there: electron/electron#2843 but with no luck.

[stewhouston]

+1

I like the functionality provided by right clicking a link, then clicking "Open in a new window" in the subsequent context menu. I'm not sure how one might go about producing this programmatically.

[jiahaog]

It would be possible to spawn a new BrowserWindow, for another url. Currently, nativefier only creates a single window for the target url. Implementing multiple windows could take quite some work though. It would be cool if we could have a flag for this!

[matthewdias]

This already works by shift-clicking a link. Could be enhanced tho by adding a menu item so you could open a new window with the base URL.

edit: i forgot this already exists.

[tmikaeld]

Would really want this to be an option for compilation, to be able to choose the default behavior of external links.

[zeke]

Would really want this to be an option for compilation, to be able to choose the default behavior of external links.

Yes! That way everyone gets the behavior they want without breaking changes.

[ronjouch]

"Would really want this to be an option for compilation, to be able to choose the default behavior of external links"

Hey @tmikaeld @pulgalipe @zeke, would Nativefier 7.1.0's new --internal-urls option (see code at #230) work for your use cases? Documentation says:

--internal-urls <value>:  regular expression of URLs to consider "internal"; 
                          all other URLs will be opened in an external browser.
                          (default: URLs on same second-level domain as app)

• Set it to a gibberish regex that will never match, and no link will be considered 'internal', forcing opening in browser
• Set it to a match-all regex like .*, and all links should be considered 'internal', forcing in-app navigation.

Also, for an exact opposite take: #23

[zeke]

Thanks, @ronjouch! I will give --internal-urls a try.

[7ammer]

FYI .. @ronjouch comment about --internal-urls .* works well for my oAuth popup issues 👍

[ronjouch]

FYI .. @ronjouch comment about --internal-urls .* works well for my oAuth popup issues 👍

@7ammer cool! Just curious: which oAuth popup issues?

[7ammer]

@ronjouch trying to run this: https://github.com/jaedb/Iris within nativefier worked brilliantly. However, when I needed to authenticate myself as a user I had issues with it complaining that popups were blocked. --internal-urls .* seemed to alleviate this issue and enabled popups to work again.

[zeke]

The internal-urls technique worked for me. Wrote about it here: http://zeke.sikelianos.com/electron-nativefier/

[plainspace]

This isn't working for me. What am I missing?

nativefier --name "Inbox" "https://inbox.google.com/" --internal-urls .*

packaging [==============================                    ] 61%Packaging app for platform darwin x64 using electron v1.6.6
{ Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, rename '/Users/darwin-x64-template' -> '../Inbox-darwin-x64'
    at Error (native)
  errno: -2,
  code: 'ENOENT',
  syscall: 'rename',
  path: '/Users/darwin-x64-template',
  dest: '../Inbox-darwin-x64' }
  packaging [========================================          ] 80%

PS I am able build without --internal-urls .*

[plainspace]

🐥

I just fixed this. Thanks for the write up @zeke!

nativefier \
--name "Inbox" \
--internal-urls "xxxxxxxxx" \
https://inbox.google.com/

[sameerHub]

nativefier google auth works with internal urls.

internal url command : --internal-urls

"(.?)(accounts.google.com)(.?)"

nativefier --name "" --flash --width "700" --height "500
" "<your.domain.com>" --internal-urls "(.?)(accounts.google.com)(.?)"

[CuiYongen]

This already works by shift-clicking a link. Could be enhanced tho by adding a menu item so you could open a new window with the base URL.

edit: i forgot this already exists.

its really a perfect solution! also works for chrome which i didn't know before