How to make MS .URL files open in your default browser

[disciple]

Note that recent versions of Internet Explorer have both Favourites (stored somewhere like "C:\Users\your_name\Favorites") and "Pinned Sites" (stored somewhere like "C:\Users\your_name\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Pinned Sites").

The "Pinned Sites" are in newfangled "*.website" files. These look like a fairly simple extension of the old *.url files, and they are also now the default if you drag and drop a page into windows explorer (you need to hold shift to get a *.url). The point in the new format is supposed to be to support things like jumplists and push notifications and favicons, although it seems to me that the latter were already supported.

I haven't tested (or looked back at any of the code), but tools for dealing with *.url files are likely to work for *.website files without modification.