Is there a way to configure a WinForms OpenFileDialog (or some other) to browse for website URL's instead of files?

Question

The question says it all.

Is there a way to browse for website links such that, upon selection, it'll return the URL string from the dialog?

Answer 1

You do not browse for website links since there is an almost infinite number (and how does your application know what they are?). Instead, you can just create a custom form with a textbox on it and sanitize the input (pass it to the Uri constructor which will parse it for you).

Answer 2

As long as the ValidateNames property is false, you should be able to pull a URL out of the FileName property. You'll still have to deal with fetching the file specified in the URL on your own.