When you want to give users the ability to quickly navigate to your WinForms application by URL with custom protocol, you just have to define your protocol in a simple registry key 🙂
See http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/networking/pluggable/overview/appendix_a.asp, for the Notepad example shown by MS.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\note] @="URL:Note Protocol" "URL Protocol"="" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\note\DefaultIcon] @="notepad.exe" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\note\shell] [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\note\shell\open] [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\note\shell\open\command] @="\"C:\\WINDOWS\\note.cmd\" \"%1\""
… oh, notepad does not uderstand the URL, so here note.cmd
@FOR /F "tokens=1* delims=:" %%a IN ("%~1") DO start notepad.exe "%%b"