N
Neal
How file types are handled is up to the UA. The author really has no
control over that.
How file types are handled is up to the UA. The author really has no
control over that.
B
BM
Hello Everyone -
1st time visitor, 1st time poster, and well pretty much 1st time coder.
I have tried things in the past but nothing special ever came out.
I'm a computer tech by trade, I can solve your computer issues, but I'm
not a natural coder. But I am inspired to create an interface in HTML
for an install CD I am making.
Is there anyway to take a link like this:
"<a href="file:apps/Firefox.exe">"
and make it a command to run the exe instead of HTML's default of
downloading the exe?
I have looked for 2 days to find some way of doing this, and I guess
being so new/incredibly unnatural at this I'm running out of ideas and
angles to consider. I'm willing to learn a scripting trick or two to
get this to do what I want.
I don't have this posted on a web-site since I am using it to be the GUI
for a CD. Also, I am using an icon to launch the application, if that
effects any of your thought processes.
Thanks for your help.
Bill
1st time visitor, 1st time poster, and well pretty much 1st time coder.
I have tried things in the past but nothing special ever came out.
I'm a computer tech by trade, I can solve your computer issues, but I'm
not a natural coder. But I am inspired to create an interface in HTML
for an install CD I am making.
Is there anyway to take a link like this:
"<a href="file:apps/Firefox.exe">"
and make it a command to run the exe instead of HTML's default of
downloading the exe?
I have looked for 2 days to find some way of doing this, and I guess
being so new/incredibly unnatural at this I'm running out of ideas and
angles to consider. I'm willing to learn a scripting trick or two to
get this to do what I want.
I don't have this posted on a web-site since I am using it to be the GUI
for a CD. Also, I am using an icon to launch the application, if that
effects any of your thought processes.
Thanks for your help.
Bill
B
BM
Neal said:
Forgive my lack of knowledge ... UA?
M
Mark Parnell
User-Agent. Usually a browser, e.g. Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Opera...
R
rf
BM said:
User Agent. The users browser.
However I don't think this is an issue as yet since you can not start a
browser this way. Indeed you need the browser to already be running so as to
process the <a> element above, assuming somebody fires it - catch 22.
What you probably want to do is to launch the html file containing the GUI's
default page, index.html for example, when the CD is stuffed into the cup
holder. You launch the data file, it is up to the OS to select (via file
associations) the program to process this file (the users default browser).
In the root of your CD install a file called autorun.inf
Inside this file:
[autorun]
shellexecute=index.html
That's it. The operating system does the rest. assuming it is Windows and
that you have IE5 or higher installed and assuming you have autorun enabled
for the CD drive and assuming the html file class associates to a browser of
some description.
BTW you *can* use this method to run a copy of firefox you have secreted on
the CD but don't. A brand new browser presented to the viewer is not only an
affront but might confuse them enouth to toss the CD
You might also bebreaching copyright.
W
WebcastMaker
Yes there is a way to run an executable, but it requires activeX and
permission from the browser. It is generally not done except by web
applications known to be safe on an intranet.
B
brucie
L
Leif K-Brooks
rf said:BTW you *can* use this method to run a copy of firefox you have secreted on
the CD but don't. A brand new browser presented to the viewer is not only an
affront but might confuse them enouth to toss the CD
breaching copyright.
Er, where would the copyright breach be? Firefox is free (speech)
software: <http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/>.
R
rf
Leif said:
Just because it is free does not mean that you can do what you want with it,
like distribute it on your very own CD. The people who wrote Firefox still
hold copyright to that piece of work. They may just, under the GNU licence
scheme, insist that it be downloaded from their own site. I don't know,
never been there, but one does have to be careful when writing things to a
CD.
Only if an author has stated up front and quite clearly that a piece of
software is in the public domain is it "free" and "free to do with what you
want".
Also take IE as an example. IE is free but not under GNU. You may download
it from their site. However you are most certainly in breach of their
copyright if you distribute IE yourself. Even a tiny little bit if of it,
like mshtml.dll. Microsoft state this quite clearly and up front in their
documentation. You may install IE6 over what you have but *only from
microsoft.com* or somebody who is licenced by them as an oem.
Think very carefully about copyright. It is more encompassing that you might
imagine.
N
Neal
Free use != public domain. Read the terms of service before you do
anything with free software - in most cases, the free use is limited to a
set of circumstances.
Whether this applies to the Firefox TOS I don't know, haven't read it
through.
L
Leif K-Brooks
rf said:
I think we're running into the good old freedom-versus-price
misunderstanding here. Free software is a term used by an organization
called the Free Software Foundation (<http://fsf.org/>) to mean software
which is developed under a license giving the user certain freedoms. The
FSF maintains a list of freedoms required of the licenses free software
is distributed under (<http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/free-sw.html>), one
of which is "The freedom to redistribute copies [...]."
The MPL (and the MPL-LGPL-GPL tri-license), which Firefox is distributed
under, is a free software license (see
<http://www.fsf.org/licenses/license-list.html#MPL>), so we already know
that it provides the freedom to redistribute. But to be thorough, here's
an excerpt from the MPL on the subject:
You may distribute Covered Code in Executable form only if the
requirements of Section 3.1-3.5 have been met for that Covered Code,
and if You include a notice stating that the Source Code version of
the Covered Code is available under the terms of this License,
including a description of how and where You have fulfilled the
obligations of Section 3.2.
Sections 3.1-3.5 aren't massive restrictions by any means; the OP could
easily comply with them if he wanted to.
By the way, where did you get the idea that the GPL (that is what you
mean by "GNU license," right?) requires code to be downloaded from the
original developer's Web site? It's also a free software license (a very
prominent one), and it doesn't have any such draconian restrictions.
T
Toby Inkster
rf said:
Have you really never read the GPL?
If they did what you subscribed they would be in violation of their own
licence agreement.
On the contrary, IE's licence has always been very relaxed when it came to
unmodified distribution. That's partly how IE became so widespread in the
early days -- ISP CDs, magazine cover CDs, etc could include MSIE for free
without having to wade through lots of red tape.
B
BM
brucie said:
Thank you everybody for your input. To be honest I'm not one to do
activeX for anything. I am so anti-IE it isn't funny.
I seem to recall back a few years ago, when I was at a call center that
my buddy and I wrote batch files that launched applications. Sadly it
has been so long that I have forgotten how to do that. There was some
trick to the single line batch script. and I know I did a simple HTML
page for that as well.
Once I can get that figured out I'm ALL for an autorun script.
Thanks again. And if I popped something to surface in your mids in this
last message please feel free to reply.
Regards,
Bill
B
brucie
In alt.html BM said:
you cant launch executables from a browser[1] without adjusting each
browsers giggly security bits. if it was possible you'd end up with
situations like every second site run by a teen full of angst formatting
your HDD.
[1] we just pretend IE hasn't had a security hole for 3 years that does
let you.
you cant launch executables from a browser[1] without adjusting each
browsers giggly security bits. if it was possible you'd end up with
situations like every second site run by a teen full of angst formatting
your HDD.
[1] we just pretend IE hasn't had a security hole for 3 years that does
let you.