Change url of web browser thru command line

browsercommand line

Is there some way to change the current url (of current tab or an specific tab) of a running web browser (any) thru command line?

It can be any browser that run on Linux, preferably if it is light weight.

I don't mean to close and re-open the browser.

I was only able to open new tabs on browsers but not change the current url of them. I could not fast and easily find ways thru qdbus either (not that there aren't).

If some plugin alows this also, it may be ok too.

Best Answer

In Firefox you can use MozRepl addon to control Firefox via telnet. For example, to change current url of a current tab to http://v4.ident.me:

(echo "content.location.href = 'http://v4.ident.me/'"; sleep 2) | telnet localhost 4242 > /dev/null

Related Solutions

LiveCD web browser distro

Although it might be bloated, you could just use Ubuntu Live (netbook or desktop).

If you copy that to a USB disk via their usb-creator-gtk, you can specify an amount of persistent storage for the user.

If you need to make more modifications to a default install, you can always take a look at this article from lifehacker about customizing a live cd.

Command Line – Using xdg-open to Open a URL in a New Process

Strange, it works like that out of the box on my Debian. Try running it in the background:

xdg-open http://www.google.com &

You can make this into a function by adding these lines to your ~/.bashrc file:

function open () {
    xdg-open "$*" &
}

You can then simply run open http://www.google.com and it will run in the background.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

LiveCD web browser distro

Command Line – Using xdg-open to Open a URL in a New Process

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