Thank you for making this extension. I was wondering why the URL started with %22 and I'm glad that this was the first page I came across to fix the problem.
I've been making a game for 9.5 years with game Game Maker 1.4999 now, and I'm almost ready to upload a demo. I realized the URL thing stopped working. I was going to use it to refer people to my Patreon page.
For future reference, I would recommend that you give an example on how to use the function after installing. I had to scroll through the comments and found someone said:
execute_shell_simple("https://yourwebsitehere.com");
I am happy that I fixed the problem, but now I am even more happy that people like you are still keeping Game Maker 1.4 still relevant.