Access needed to local file system

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Access needed to local file system

Betjeman

2:02 pm on Jun 21, 2005 (gmt 0)

I'm sure this is a common problem and I can't believe browsers appear to have just turned off this ability completely. Hopefully someone can help!

I have an HTTP intranet application, which has access to a shared network drive. It creates a Word file on the drive and notes where it's saved.

The web page then presents a "file:///" link to the user to open the file directly in Word, and edit it, without the user having to download the file locally.

It works in IE on Windows 2000 but not Firefox or IE on Windows XP. This is mind numbing. What am I doing wrong?

Here's some code (needs to be run on localhost to not work)


<html> 
<body>
<a href="file:///C:/boot.ini">Link</a>
</body>
</html>

Thanks in advance,

Phil

BlobFisk

11:05 am on Jun 22, 2005 (gmt 0)

Hi Betjeman and welcome to WebmasterWorld!

IE has components (bundled with Office) that allows you to open Word (and Excel etc.) files within the browser, other browsers do not have these feature available to them so treat the file as a binary file to download.

I've seen applets used to try and circumvent this but I find it an inelegant solution...