I am trying to build an Adobe AIR application that will run on Linux/Mac OS/Windows, which monitors user's browsing history.
How can my AIR application find out which browsers are installed? In other words, the list of browsers' history to monitor.
Also is there any way to know if a browser is running or not at run time?
As for the history file, I've got some information on Firefox, so any information/link on reading/parsing history file of IE/Safari/Opera/Chrome will be appreciated.
There is no API with which to do this. I think your best bet is to look in the common locations where they are installed, i.e. "program files" or "applications" on Windows, Mac, etc. If you absolutely need to find the browsers, you could walk the entire filesystem looking for the binaries, although that obviously has performance implications.
AIR offers basically no integration with the operating system, so there is no real way to determine what is running and what's not. If any of the browsers create temp files while running, you could check for the existence of them.
Sounds like you have your work cut out for you. :)