MSIE question related to WebDAV

This is not really a WebDAV question, but more of a question of integrating
WebDAV nicely with Web browsers (such as MSIE).

I think the answer is no, but is there any way to tell Microsoft Internet
Explorer (or Netscape for that matter I guess) that a URL in a <A HREF="...">
or similar is in a DAV folder, so it should use the application to natively
load the document.

For example, if I have a Word document in a DAV web folder, and I have a
web page with a <A HREF="..."> pointing to the document, then if the user
clicks on the link, IE will download the file, put it into a temporary
directory, then start up Word on the downloaded file. So Word does not
talk to the WebDAV repository. I would rather give Word the URL and say
'hey, you load it yourself'. That way Word can save the changes directly
back to the Web DAV folder.

My best solution so far is to put on the web page a URL to a document
that contains the URL of the DAV resource to be edited, give the first
URL a file extension of .xyz, get the user to associate a small program
to the .xyz file extension which starts up Word with the second
URL on the command line.

Any other brilliant ways of doing this without having to reconfigure
the user's web browser first?

Thanks.
Alan

Received on Wednesday, 4 July 2001 05:19:21 UTC