Windows Tip: Beyond the run box

August 13, 2007 —

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One of my favorite Windows keyboard shortcuts is WINDOWS + R (pressing the WINDOWS key and R key simultaneously). This brings up the Run box, which lets me type UNC paths and get to network shares a lot faster than browsing My Network Places. Not only that, I can even type C: in the Run box to open my system drive in Explorer, type Control Panel to open the Control Panel, or even type an URL to open a Web site using Internet Explorer. And the Run box even remembers my most recently typed paths and URLs in -- guess what -- a Most Recently Used (MRU) list saved in the Registry location HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RunMRU.

And therein lies the problem. I like to use the keyboard as much as possible and avoid using the mouse, but if I use my Run box for so many different purposes, my RunMRU key fills up with too many saved entries for me to make useful use of this feature. My main priority is for frequently-used UNC paths to be easily accessible from the Run box, so it would be nice if there was an alternative way for me to easily open Web site URLs by simply typing them.

Well, where there's a script, there's usually a way. Here's a simple VBScript script that, when run, displays an input box that let's you type an URL such as www.mtit.com (my Web site), press ENTER, and open the URL using Internet Explorer:

Dim strURL 
Dim oShell
Set oShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
strURL = InputBox("Type an URL:")
If Len(strURL)>0 Then 
                oShell.Run """c:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe"" " & strURL
End If

Open Notepad and make sure Word Wrap is turned off, then copy and paste the above code into Notepad, and save the script as OpenURL.vbs in some directory on your hard drive. Now create a shortcut on your desktop to your OpenURL.vbs file. Then right-click on your shortcut, select Properties, and define a keyboard shortcut such as CTRL + ALT + U so you can run the script without having to touch your mouse. For example, to open my Web site, I simply press CTRL + ALT + U, type www.mtit.com, and press ENTER. And notice I didn't even have to type a http:// in prefix since the script opens whatever I type in Internet Explorer, not Windows Explorer. (With the Run box, if you want to open a Web site that doesn't have www in it, you must type the full URL including the prefix e.g. http://support.microsoft.com.
Of course, the disadvantage here is that the script has no memory, so I can't type a partial URL and have autocomplete suggest the rest. But maybe an enterprising reader who is knowledgeable in script and has nothing better to do can modify the above script to have it save entered URLs in a text file and display then in a listbox for easy access. Any takers? Send your script to me if you figure out how to do this and I'll share it with other readers of this newsletter.

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