# GoogleEarth KML - embedded link handling

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/googleearth-kml-embedded-link-handling/452509>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [June 10, 2008, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/googleearth-kml-embedded-link-handling/452509 "2008-06-10T23:50:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\
**Post date:** [June 10, 2008, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/googleearth-kml-embedded-link-handling/452509/1 "2008-06-10T23:50:39Z")

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I’d like to use GoogleEarth for geographic presentation of selection options. Something along the lines of “Here’s a bunch of areas in which you might be interested - select one, click on it, and some useful things will happen.”

It’s easy enough to create a program that generates a KML file, and to fire up GoogleEarth to display it. The KML file includes placemarks; clicking on one brings up informative text, which can contain embedded hyperlinks.

The common result of clicking a hyperlink is to invoke a web page. But what I’d like is for the clicked link to cause data to be fed back to the program that generated the KML - saying, in effect, “Your user clicked placemark XYZ.”

Obviously, the hyperlink will reference something on the local machine. But what should that something be? An HTML file that runs a small JavaScript? A program that writes an argument to a file?

(I should perhaps note that I’m working in [VisualStudio.NET](http://VisualStudio.NET) 2005).

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\
**Post date:** [June 12, 2008, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/googleearth-kml-embedded-link-handling/452509/2 "2008-06-12T02:12:20Z")

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Am I allowed one bump?