How to enable links to local files from your wiki on Firefox
I like wiki. It’s a good platform to share information and ideas in your organization, community or the entire web. Occasionally, you’d like to add links to local files in your organization wiki like list of phone numbers, some how-to documents or something else.
However, Firefox users find out that nothing happens when they’re clicking on the local-file links. This is actually due to security reasons. So, if you wish to override the behavior, this article will explain what to do. The article suggests two add-ons to use. I prefer to LocalLink and not IE Tab because the later reloads the entire page on the IE engine and loses your logging session.
Meanwhile, on the wiki pages
The correct format for links to local files is to prefix the path with file:/// and wrap it with brackets. Let’s say your file resides in C:\MyFolder\MyFile.ext. The link in wiki will be edited as [file:///C:/MyFolder/MyFile.txt] (make sure to use slash and not backslash). In case the file resides in a server, the format will look like this: [file://///MyServer/MyFolder/MyFile.txt] (did you noticed we’re now using 5 slashes?).
After installing LocalLink you could open the file by right-clicking on the link and selecting from ‘Open Link in Local Context’ menu.
You might consider setting your application configuration in Firefox. Go to Tools, Options and choose the Applications tab. Now, for each relevant file type, choose the action you want Firefox to take.
Tags: firefox, wiki