Delphi: Set Browsers Homepage - delphi

Question

I want my application to be able to set IE, Firefox, Chrome & Operas homepages when a button is pressed. I understand IEs homepage is set in the registry, which I understand how to change, but can anyone give me any help with the others? Thanks

Answer 1

Chrome stores the homepage in a file called 'Preferences'. On Windows XP, this is located at;
C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Local Settings\Application
Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default
On Vista+, it's located at;
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default
This file is JSON format, and so it can be opened and viewed as plain text. In order to change the homepage, you'd need to load the JSON from this file, and change the homepage field value. You may also need to change the homepage_changed field value in order for it to stick. Using something like SuperObject to change the field would be an easy solution (if I get time, I'll write up some example code later).
Firefox uses a pref.js file to store it's settings, and realistically, a way of changing this would be to load this file, find the something that's along the lines of;
user_pref("browser.startup.homepage", "[URL]");
...and edit it as appropriate before saving the file. This should be a simple task using some simple find-and-replace code. I'd strongly advise that you use a pos() function though, as it could be that the end-user has already got their own custom homepage set and so searching for a preset string (e.g. [URL]) may not work, and certainly wouldn't be reliable.
A quick search hasn't given me enough information about Opera to provide a solution, but I'll keep looking and respond if I do find such a way.
Note that none of these methods have been tested and are merely provided based upon some very quick research.