'start htlm page from VB5
'on the General Declaretions section

'thanks to Martin Lansler  who wrote:
'I'd just like to suggest that you 
pass
 the VB5.0 predefined 
constant
 vbNullString in the ShellExecute
'function in your VB5.0 Shell and URL examples, instead of the empty VB string "". Since API's 
are
 written
'in c, they 
are
 expecting a null-terminated string, otherwise strange things might occur.

Private Declare Function ShellExecute Lib "shell32.dll" 
alias
 "ShellExecuteA" (ByVal hwnd As Long, ByVal lpOperation As String, ByVal lpFile As String, ByVal lpParameters As String, ByVal lpDirectory As String, ByVal nShowCmd As Long) As Long
Private Declare Function GetDesktopWindow Lib "user32" () As Long
Const SW_SHOWNORMAL = 1

Public Function StartURL(URL As String) As Long
    
dim
 Scr_hDC As Long
    Scr_hDC = GetDesktopWindow()
    StartURL = ShellExecute(Scr_hDC, "Open", URL, vbNullString, "C:\", SW_SHOWNORMAL)

End Function

'use as Call StartDoc("http://www.microsoft.com")