Link that will force file to open in a specific application

pilotmom55 · Joined: 19 Apr 2008 Posts: 2 Location: Arlington WA

Good Day,

I am writing an application in MS ACCESS that will be uploaded to web. From my webpage, I want to embed a link to the file and have the file automatically open using MS ACCESS. Is it possible to specify the application to use when opening the file that is linked? Is there an attribute associated with the link that can tell the system which program to use when opening the link so that it doesn't try to display the file in the IE Browser??? Or some way to tell the system to download the file, rather than display it?

<a href=http:/AirplaneDatabase/Maintenance.mdb">Maintenance Records</a>

or to open a word file in MS Word

<a href=http:/AirplaneDatabase/HowTo.doc>ReadMe Instructions</a>

Pilotmom

Question

felicia28 · Joined: 21 Apr 2008 Posts: 4

Hi,

All you need to do is put that file in a specific place in your ftp program, and reference it there in the code.

ie: <a href="files/Maintenance.mdb">Click here for Maintenance Records</a>

I believe .mdb will automatically use MS Access to open.

pilotmom55 · Joined: 19 Apr 2008 Posts: 2 Location: Arlington WA

unfortunately, just linking to the file doesn't always cause the file to open with the correct software application ... my link is correct ..

My question is: is there an HTML command or attribute to specify the application to be used. I think the answer is "NO". I believe the user's system has to have the extensions mapped.

On my MAC, the file will only download, it won't open in an application, at all.

from what I can tell, there is NOT an attribute to specify the correct application for opening a non-HTML file, especially if the extensions are not mapped, or if using a MAC.

felicia28 · Joined: 21 Apr 2008 Posts: 4

My guess would be no then, also. Everytime I've done it the computer recognizes the file extension and opens the corresponding program. I guess it would depend on the user's computer.

Sorry!

Corey Bryant · Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 1:39 pm

For security reasons, some files are not allowed to be opened in a browser. Some exceptions are a PDF, maybe a DOC, or XLS file.

Clicking on the MDB link - well it depends on how you have the server set up and how the client has his browser set up to handle this file extension.

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Corey
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