Absolute "file:" URLs under Windows95

For a link to a local file on another hard drive, is there any href format
usable by most popular browsers?

Amaya creates and accepts a format without the "file:" keyword, for example:

<a href="P:\USRMODEM\readme.html">US Robotics</a>

However, this format is not accepted by Netscape. My goal is to create a
local "homepage" usable by MS Internet Explorer, Netscape, Lynx, and Amaya.

For a local absolute URL, Netscape expects the "file:" keyword in a format
such as:

<a href="file://P|/USRMODEM/readme.html">US Robotics</a>

For this format, Amaya reports a leading slash in its status-line error: 
"Cannot load \P|/USRMODEM/readme.html"

Amaya also reports errors for all variations which I've tried, including a
colon instead of the vertical line, reversed slashes, escaped special
characters, and a different number of leading slashes. Amaya interprets some
of these cases as a relative URL. 

Unless I've missed some universally accepted format for absolute URLs to
local files, would it be appropriate for Amaya to accept the format used by
Netscape?

Received on Wednesday, 8 March 2000 09:35:44 UTC