Creating shortcuts to websites that will use IE instead of default browser?

I currently am using Firefox as my default browser. There are a few web applications that I must access on a regular basis that will unfortunately not work in Firefox and must use IE. I am extremly lazy and have shortcuts to these on my desktop.

Is there a way to make a shortcut to a website to open with IE no matter what the default browser is? How/

The OS I am using is Windows XP, but I suspect what ever the solution is will work with other windows versions also.

Solution 1:

You could make a shortcut to IE and pass it the URL like this:

"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" http://www.example.com

You could also use the IE View plugin.