keyboard shortcuts - How to focus WEB-browser with a hotkey in Windows?

In Windows desktop shortcut's properties one can assign a Hot Key to launch that shortcut. There are

Three Possible Outcomes

1. First time the hot-key launches that application, next time it brings the already-open window to the front and focuses it. This is the preferred behavior (by me). Good applications with this behavior are: Far Commander, Putty, AIMP, Scite, Emacs and most other.


2. The hot-key launches a new instance of the application every time. This is worse than useless (for my style of working). Includes all Java applications, Internet Explorer and some other.


3. The hot-key does not launch a new instance of the application, but does not bring the existing one to the top either (the first time it launches the application and then it is on the top). Keyboard focus is taken away from the current application but not given to any other application. Also pretty useless. Example: Opera browser, there are others.

This is the same in all versions of WindowsNT, 5.0 and upwards (don't know about 3.5-4.0).

I want to switch to an already-open browser with a hot-key, e.g.

• CTRL+ALT+F -> FireFox,


• CTRL+ALT+O -> Opera,


• CTRL+ALT+C -> Chromium,


• CTRL+ALT+I -> Internet Explorer,

but none of them function that way with the Windows shortcut hot-keys.
Is there another solution? The window titles are all unpredictable. Is there another browser that supports hot-keys?