[WEB4LIB] Launching apps from Netscape

[Mark Ellis]

James,

Have a look at W3Launch at: http://bmbwww.leeds.ac.uk/w3launch/home.htm

> -----Original Message-----
> From: James Klock [mailto:j-klock at evanston.lib.il.us]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 01, 1998 12:19 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list
> Subject: [WEB4LIB] Launching apps from Netscape 
> 
> 
> Until recently (a few hours ago), we had a set of computers 
> that were using
> networked CD-ROM products for public-access reference 
> purposes.  I've just
> replaced these with Windows NT boxes that get the majority of these
> services on-line.  There are, however, a few hold-outs: 
> products that we
> still run locally.  
> 
> I've heard it said that there are ways of setting things up so that
> following a link from Netscape will in fact open a local 
> application, which
> is not a plug-in and does not use any Netscape functionality. 
>  The most
> obvious way would be to set up the Netscape Preferences to 
> recognize a file
> extension and open it in an appropriate application.  A 
> FILE:// link to the
> datafile you want to open would then launch the external app 
> to view that
> linked-to file.
> 
> The problem I have with this is that the linked-to file has to be
> "downloaded" into memory by netscape-- a lengthy process when you're
> talking about multimegabyte databases.  Is there a better way 
> out there?
> 
> James
>