Is an external server browser included with the new version of the game or do I HAVE to start the game to browse servers?

At the moment you have to start the game.
Although, we are looking at integrating with other 3rd party server browsing software.

I've just added something that people may like, and if they do I will put it into the game.

I've added a join button to the server list on this web site http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/servers/servers.php. Clicking on this button will launch scorched and join the selected game.

1) download the attached launcher program and put it in the same directory as your scorched3d executable (usualy c:\program files\scorched3d).
2) Click on the join link (the blue arrows) on the web page
3) When asked what to use to open the .s3l file choose the launcher program (it should only ask you the first time)
4) Scorched should launch and try to connect to the server

Wicked. that's a great idea.
It would be handy if we also include the trigger links in other
places, like posts here or in other forums.

It would only require adding s3l as a valid extention to the forum. Alone, they're harmless text files.

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About launching the game from a web browser, I think a better approach would be to register a protocol, such as "s3d". This wouldn't require any special files at all.

I used an .exe to test this theory but now it's integrated into the scorchedc source code. So the above method doesn't require any files, it just requires you associate the scorched3dc executable with the file download from the web.

Should also work for any system.

Well, a file is a file even if it was downloaded from the web. Using a custom protocol would allow linking to a server using a conventional URL without the need to either link to scorched3d.co.uk or to upload the file somewhere.

Edit: turns out this "custom protocol" is actually properly referred to as an URI scheme.

I realise that there's actually no need for this to be handled by the game itself. (Unless you happen to use Windows, of course.) So here's a couple of screen-shots and a small shell script to get the "s3d" URI scheme (such as "s3d://83.170.97.214:27280" to access Main) working in Firefox/Iceweasel on GNU+Linux and possibly Mac OS X. (See the attachment descriptions for more information.)

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how about we petition for xfire support?

I agree on the Xfire tilt, they all seem to stay within the Xfire bubble, so lets pop it.