Can I use python for this .. ??

[BartlebyScrivener]

For starters, you need the os and webbrowser modules

import os
import webbrowser

webbrowser.open("http://mail.google.com/mail")

# need to know the shell keyword for starting the app
os.system('start ' + 'Winword')

# the equivalent of double-clicking on the doc or file
os.startfile("c:/MyFiles/MyTextFile.txt")

If you actually want to log onto password-protected sites it gets
gnarly fast (beyond me). You can read about by perusing the urllib2
module or search this list at groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python

Hope this helps.

rick