54.1 Following URLs

M-x browse-url <RET> url <RET>

Load a URL into a Web browser.

The Browse-URL package provides facilities for following URLs specifying links on the World Wide Web. Usually this works by invoking a web browser, but you can, for instance, arrange to invoke compose-mail from ‘mailto:’ URLs.

The general way to use this feature is to type M-x browse-url, which displays a specified URL. If point is located near a plausible URL, that URL is used as the default. Other commands are available which you might like to bind to keys, such as browse-url-at-point and browse-url-at-mouse.

You can customize Browse-URL's behavior via various options in the browse-url Customize group, particularly browse-url-browser-function. You can invoke actions dependent on the type of URL by defining browse-url-browser-function as an association list. The package's commentary available via C-h p under the ‘hypermedia’ keyword provides more information. Packages with facilities for following URLs should always go through Browse-URL, so that the customization options for Browse-URL will affect all browsing in Emacs.