Open Windows apps from Firefox (where windows .apps are)

Discussion in 'Windows Virtual Machine' started by reesd, Aug 18, 2008.

  1. reesd

    reesd Member

    Messages:
    25
    Just sharing a discovery that I don't think is documented/covered in detail elsewhere.

    Following the great advice from the thread http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=19387 I now have all my hyperlinks opening Mac Firefox, which is great because Windows Firefox seems to put a lot of "load" on Parallels Desktop.

    Next I want to do the reverse, when I click on a link in Firefox I want it to open an app in Windows. You can use SmartSelect, but that doesn't always work for Firefox. I believe its because Firefox maintains its own mappings based on HTTP type in addition to using the OS's underlying mappings based on extension.

    I haven't been able to figure out how to do this in Firefox until today. I knew how to do it in SmartSelect, but that is extension based. I also knew how to do it in Finder, which would show me the windows apps in the list automatically based on the extension.

    What I just figured out today is that Parallels does create a set of app proxies for the Windows apps, but it doesn't put it in Applications. It puts it under the guest folder, which I never thought to look in. So the Windows applications will be located in /Users/<UserName>/Documents/Parallels/<Guest Name>/Windows Applications. So now when I want to map a type in Firefox to a Windows app I just need to navigate to that folder.

    Hopefully this someone else some time. I don't think its documented because your expected to just use the SmartSelect menu, but that doesn't work in all case.

    d
     

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