Posixy way to launch browser?

Question

Is there a 'Posixy' way to open an URL, preferrably in the default browser? I would like to do something like

ShellExecute(0, _T("open"), url, 0, 0, SW_SHOWDEFAULT);

that works on GNU/Linux and MAC. I read some answer saying that`

if (fork() == 0)
    system("sensible-browser http://wherever.com");

does the trick on Debian systems at least. Is there an easy way to extend this to something that works on other distributions and Mac OS X?

Answer 1

A user's browser preference is not really something the POSIX standard concerns itself with that I'm aware of.