Terry J. Reedy added the comment:

The regression issue is red herring. An issue should propose new behavior 
(based on an understanding of the doc and actual current behavior). Then ask: 
"Is the proposed behavior better than the current behavior?", and "Is the 
current behavior a bug?". After reading the doc and the code, I am convinced 
that current behavior is close to the implied wanted behavior, and that it is 
not a bug.

The doc says
 webbrowser.open(url, new=0, autoraise=True)
    Display url using the default browser.

What does 'default browswer' mean? Near the top, the doc says "If the 
environment variable BROWSER exists, it is interpreted to override the platform 
default list of browsers,". So the 'default browser' is actually the 'default 
browser list'. What open() does is to try each in turn and stop when one says 
it succeeded. So the doc should say 'using the first default browser that 
claims to succeed.'

What does 'default browser list' mean? It depends on the platform *and* the 
software loaded on the particular machine when webbrowser is first imported in 
a particular instance of the interpreter. The 'platform' part is in the quote 
above, the rest is not. I will open a separate doc issue.

On Windows, the list starts with 'default Windows browser', which calls 
os.startfile(), which, I believe, does call the user default browser. Next is 
Internet Explorer -- if available at that time on the particular machine! If 
the user-default browser rejects the url, then IE is tried.

On my win7 machine today, I have Firefox the default and IE available. Firefox 
rejects 127.0.0.1:8080 with an 'Unable to connect' error box. IE 'accepts' it 
in the sense that it displays an information starting 'The webpage cannot be 
displayed'. For 'invalid.xxx', IE displays the page for a German domain 
registrar. I strongly suspect that the change Anatoly saw was a difference in 
IE, out of Python's control.

Georg, if you think I got it wrong, please correct.

----------
nosy: +terry.reedy
resolution:  -> invalid
status: open -> closed

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<http://bugs.python.org/issue8936>
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