Since version 2.10, GTK+ provides the GtkLinkButton widget as a replacement for the GnomeHRef widget in the libgnomeui library.

Porting an application from GnomeHRef to GtkLinkButton is very simple. GtkLinkButton does not have a default action for "clicked" signal. So instead of simply creating the widget

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GtkWidget *button;

button = gnome_href_new (url, "");

you will have to handle the activation of the GtkLinkButton, using the ::clicked signal for instance

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static void
link_button_clicked_cb (GtkWidget *widget,
                        gpointer   data)
{
  const gchar *link;

    link = gtk_link_button_get_uri (GTK_LINK_BUTTON (widget));
    open_browser_at_url (link);
}

/* ... */

  GtkWidget *button;

    button = gtk_link_button_new (url);
    g_signal_connect (button, "clicked",
                      G_CALLBACK (link_button_clicked_cb), NULL);

If you have more than one GtkLinkButton instead of connecting a signal to each one, you can use a "hook function" which will be called whenever a user activates a link button

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static void
link_button_hook (GtkLinkButton *button,
                  const gchar   *link,
            gpointer       user_data)

{
  open_browser_at_url (link);
}

/* ... */

  GtkWidget *button1 = gtk_link_button_new (uri1);
    GtkWidget *button2 = gtk_link_button_new (uri2);

  gtk_link_button_set_uri_hook (link_button_hook, NULL, NULL);

Starting with GTK+ 2.16, it is no longer necessary to set up a uri hook manually, since GTK+ now defaults to calling gtk_show_uri() if no uri hook has been set.