Create application link to Skype profile

I'd like to create an application link in HTML to a Skype profile. I've found that you can do the following:

<a href="skype:profile_name">Link to my profile</a>

But this seems to trigger a Skype call to that profile. I'd just want the option to browse the profile or add them as a contact, how can I do this?

This doesn't seem to be very well documented, but there are ways to specify an action for a Skype profile link. This is the syntax

skype:profile_name?action

Examples of such actions are

• call to call
• chat to chat
• voicemail to leave a voice mail
• sendfile to send a file
• add to add to contacts
• userinfo to view profile

In this case then, the link to view the profile would look like this

<a href="skype:profile_name?userinfo">Link to my profile</a>

See also the Skype URIs page on MSDN.