IE 7.0 open FTP site problem

[desju13]

I have a link that was set to open an FTP site. Clicking on this link (ftp://

http://www.mysite.com)

would require the user to log in. Depending on the credentials the user would be directed to the appropriate folder. WIth Ie7.0 going to this link brings them to the FTP default directory with the description to "Click Page then Open FTP site in Windows Explorer". So the user has to log in to get the first page, then after following the instructions needs to log in again to get to their directory.

My question: Does anyone know of a way to force the link to open in an FTP window? something like javascript:window.openFTP('ftp://

http://www.mysite.com')

OR target="_FTP"

Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.

 

[smah]

Very interesting question. Ultimately, you want to open Windows Explorer (explorer.exe) on the client machine with the username & ftp address. You can test this yourself from a command prompt or the 'Run' command by simply using
[ignore]explorer ftp://username@mysite.com[/ignore] (note the space after 'explorer')
The behavior using the format above is what you expect from your link, right?

If this is possible, javascript would be the way to go, but I don't know enough to say if it's even possible. My thought is user clicks on a link & that opens a javascript pop-up asking for a username. Then once entered (click OK or something) then Windows explorer is opened with the username@address parameter. Of course, pop-up blockers and users that have javascript disabled will have problems, but forum216 can probably help to know if something like this is even possible.

 

[smah]

The only other option that I can think of, would require changing the default FTP behavior on all the client machines. This might not be too bad if you have control of all of them and can make remote registry changes, but if this is a public FTP server or if you don't have access to all the client machines, that won't be practical.