Netscape DDE (or NetscDDE, for short) allows you to open HTML pages or URLs with your favorite browser. Despite its name, NetscDDE supports the following browsers: Using NetscDDE, you can instruct a currently running copy of the browser to display a certain page instead of having to run a separate copy for the new page.

When starting NetscDDE, you must at least pass the URL to open on the command line. This URL can be a local HTML file also.

NetscDDE will then first look for whether the browser is already running. If so, the running browser instance will be told to open the specified URL in an existing window. If not, NetscDDE will prompt you for whether the browser should be started. Unless this is overridden with command line arguments, NetscDDE will then attempt to start the default browser that is specified in your URL objects; if none is there, it will attempt to start NETSCAPE.EXE from your PATH.

This will work with all known versions of Netscape on &os2;. To make this work with Mozilla too, you must use the -S parameter because Mozilla uses a different DDE server name. On &os2;, Mozilla has been supporting DDE since version 0.9.3.

Netscape DDE understands the following command line parameters:

-q
If this is specified, NetscDDE will not show its "Contacting..." etc. windows (quiet mode).
-n
Specifies whether to use a new browser window when the browser is already running. If this is specified, a new window will be opened. By default, an existing browser window will load the URL.
-x or -X
These options control NetscDDE's behavior if the DDE connection fails, that is, if Netscape is not currently running. If neither -x nor -X are specified, NetscDDE will prompt you for whether a new instance should be started. If -x is specified, NetscDDE will not prompt and never start a new copy. If -X is specified, NetscDDE will not prompt and always start a new copy.
-p fullpath
This specifies the executable to be started if the DDE connection fails. If this is not specified, NetscDDE will look for your default browser settings from a WPUrl object. If none are there, NETSCAPE.EXE on your PATH is used. If you want to use Mozilla, you could specify the full path of MOZILLA.EXE, for example. You could also start a batch file.
-P params
This specifies additional parameters for the browser to be started. The URL given on the command line will then be added after params.
-s directory
This specifies the startup directory to be used if the DDE connection fails. This is useful if the browser executable is not on the LIBPATH and the browser does not find its DLLs otherwise. If this is not specified, NetscDDE will look for your default browser settings from a WPUrl object. If none are there, no startup directory is used.
-S server
This specifies the DDE server name to use. If this is not specified, NetscDDE will use NETSCAPE, to which all &os2; Netscape versions will react. However, since Mozilla uses the Mozilla server name, you must specify this option explicitly to use Mozilla with NetscDDE.
-h
If this is specified, the browser will be started hidden. This might be useful if you have used the -p option with a batch file.
-m
If this is specified, the browser will be started minimized. This might be useful if you have used the -p option with a batch file.