How to programmatically change browser URL

Question

In my C++ Windows application I use ShellExecute to open a remote PDF file in the internet browser at a certain PDF Destination (dynamic bookmarks provided by Adobe Acrobat Reader):

ShellExecute(NULL, "open", "https://www.myweb.cloud/guide.pdf#dest_1", NULL , NULL, SW_SHOWNORMAL);

Then if I want to move to another Destination, another call to ShellExecute (with #dest_2 in the URL) simply open another page in the browser and download the PDF again opening it at that Destination.

Is there a way to programmatically change the URL (from #dest_1 to #dest_2) without making the browser to open a new page e re-dowload the PDF?

I also use LibCurl in my application in order to retrieve data from remote servers. Can I reach my goal with LibCurl? If so, could you plese show me a code sample?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

1. External links opened with ShellExecute are always opened in a new tab by default. Chrome can't change this behavior. Early Firefox had an option for opening an external link in a currently active tab, but does not seem to have it now.
2. You can download files with libcurl, see url2file example. After a file has been downloaded, you can open it in a certain application with ShellExecute . You just need to find an application, that is suitable to your requirements. For example Adobe Reader does not seem to support opening in the same tab 1 , 2 . As @KJ commented while I was typing my answer, sumatrapdf -reuse-instance seem to be suitable for you.