Instructing web browsers to request web pages

[stoney]

Hi there,

Sorry if this has been asked already - I had a quick search but am still stumped!

I'm currently designing a system which is supposed to trigger off events coming over the com ports and then send messages to a web client to request a web page from a web server. The client may either be running or not running beforehand. Either is good.

Clearly this is possible, since email clients are able to do this - but I can't seem to find out how. Most of the previous posts have been about making the request from the web client. Does anyone know how I make the web client to it?

I need to do this on Windows not using MFC (also will be on Linux, but that's not important right now...).

Many thanks for all your help!

[stoney]

I'm guessing due to the lack of posts that either

a) this is really hard to do or no-one knows how...
b) I was a bit rude in my post - so apologies if I've just turned up looking for help.

So has anyone got any ideas? A 'no, because..' would be fine...