open IE without toolbar or address bar from Windows VB Application

Question

Shell ("explorer.exe www.google.com")

is how I'm currently opening my products ad page after successful install. However I think it would look much nicer if I could do it more like Avira does, or even a popup where there are no address bar links etc. Doing this via an inbrowser link is easy enough

<a href="http://page.com"
onClick="javascript:window.open('http://page.com','windows','width=650,height=350,toolbar=no,menubar=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,location=no,directories=no,status=no');    return false")">Link text</a>

But how would I go about adding this functionality in VB?

Answer 1

If you want it to look professional, you need to use an actual browser component. VB.NET comes with one. If you are using an older version of VB, you'd need to go third party. If you want to stay with a shell open, you would have to individually target the browser command-line and pass arguments to indicate that it should not have toolbars etc.

Answer 2

Speaking as a user, I find castrated popup windows annoying and unproductive.

So my answer is: "don't".