Work-around for launching batch files in IE 5

[Charles P. Hobbs]

A few months back, someone posted a method to run bat/pif files from
Netscape. (Essentially, one just opened the files using the Ctrl-O
command, then input the name of the .pif file). This is useful for running
CD databases or other non-web programs from a web browser menu.

Now, I'd like to do the same thing with IE 5, with the programs in links
(<a href="program.pif">). The programs will run from the browser, but only
after putting up a "Open this program/Save this file to disk". It's
intrusive and confusing to most of our users.

I can't seem to turn it off, even for local files (I understand why one
would want such a dialog with bat/pif/com/exe files downloaded from the
Internet, but why is this needed for a local file, which is ostensibly
"safe"?)

I also considered using W3Launch, which I've used before with older
versions of Netscape. The problem is, unlike with older versions of IE
(say IE 3), I can't find out how to tell the browser to run w3launch.
(There's no "helper" menu like in earlier versions)

Anyone have any insight? Thanks!

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Charles P. Hobbs                          __  __     ____  ___       ___ ____
transit at primenet.com                     /__)/__) / / / / /_  /\  / /_    /
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