Using Host in Forms is not freezing the caller

Question

I am using the Host built-in command to launch a web page from a client/server Forms6i application.  I've found there are many different ways I can do this:
I can hardcode the path of the browser executable,
     host('"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" http://www.oracle.com/index.html'); 
use 'Start' with or without '@' and 'cmd /c ',
     host('@Start iexplore http://www.oracle.com/index.html');
     host('cmd /c Start iexplore http://www.oracle.com/index.html');
     host('Start iexplore http://www.oracle.com/index.html');
or use ShellExecute to launch the default windows browser. 
I want the form to be frozen/unusable until the user closes the browser.  I thought that was the default behavior of the Host command.  However, that only happens in the example where I provide the path.  I'd rather not have to provide the path to the browser executable, but I can't seem to get either of the other two methods to freeze the form for me.  Any ideas?
Thanks,
Meredith

Answer 1

I suspect the reason you don't want to hard code the IE path if for the obvious reason that some users may have it installed somewhere else.  Good thinking
For cases like this, it may be worth investing some time in offering some configurable options to the user.  This would be a good first example.  The option to choose the default browser related to the app.  You could create a "Settings" option in your application where the user could set things like (these are just examples):
Preferred browser
Save current position (this would allow the app to start in the current position next time it was started)
Background color
And so on....
Use TEXT_IO to create a config file on the client machine that would store the values chosen by the user.  On application startup (maybe in WHEN-NEW-FORM-INSTANCE), use TEXT_IO to read the values previously set.  If no config file is found at startup, use TEXT_IO to create one with default values that the you decide.  Doing something like this would make the application more customizable for the user, but it would also solve your current problem.  With this design, you can get the path to the preferred browser based on what the user selected.  So if they wanted Firefox instead of IE, they would get it and your app code wouldn't need changing to do it.
That said, whatever you decide to do, remember that in newer versions of Forms there is no "client/server" deployment option.  Therefore the functionality of such calls will change is some cases.  Hint-hint.... Please consider upgrading to the latest Oracle Forms version.  The latest version is 11.1.2.2.  In the latest version, you can do basically the same thing I described about with the addition of WebUtil.  Therefore very little code would need to be updated when moving to the web.