Hello All,
We have a web based document management system. Usually used by windows users, when some one wants to open a document in windows internet explorer or firefox, they click a link something along the lines of file://///servername/share/filename.doc (not sure why we have some many ///'s but it seems to work better in fox and ie that way).
We have just got some macs in the office which we use for development and to expand our customer base to mac using companies. Most of our web based system works fine, as you would expect, but getting the link to a document from a web browser to work seems harder. This is how far we got so far.
Modified the link in the 'webpage' to use smb://servername/sharename/document.doc (instead of file://///). Does not work out the box. Found a application called smbMount that becomes the smb:// url scheme handler for Mac OS X. Now we can get as far as the link passes the path smb://servername/sharename/document.doc to finder. So we are at the point where finder is holding things up. What happens is finder mounts the share, navigates to the directory and even highlights the document in question. Great. But now how do we open that document automatically ?
You can easilly replicate it by clicking go in finder and looking for a path to one of your own documents.
I have started toying with automator, but not sure how to fire this from an smb link. Im guessing its a security feature of osx but who knows ! We want the end user to have to do as little or no changin to their system as possible so installing smbMount is already a pain !
Using Lepard, and safari4 or firefox3.5 (firefox has a few about:config changes to pass the link for smb urls to the smbMount app).
Any hints or solutions would help allot. We are windows and linux desktop converts for about 6 months and cant look back from the speed and simplicity of osx.
We have a web based document management system. Usually used by windows users, when some one wants to open a document in windows internet explorer or firefox, they click a link something along the lines of file://///servername/share/filename.doc (not sure why we have some many ///'s but it seems to work better in fox and ie that way).
We have just got some macs in the office which we use for development and to expand our customer base to mac using companies. Most of our web based system works fine, as you would expect, but getting the link to a document from a web browser to work seems harder. This is how far we got so far.
Modified the link in the 'webpage' to use smb://servername/sharename/document.doc (instead of file://///). Does not work out the box. Found a application called smbMount that becomes the smb:// url scheme handler for Mac OS X. Now we can get as far as the link passes the path smb://servername/sharename/document.doc to finder. So we are at the point where finder is holding things up. What happens is finder mounts the share, navigates to the directory and even highlights the document in question. Great. But now how do we open that document automatically ?
You can easilly replicate it by clicking go in finder and looking for a path to one of your own documents.
I have started toying with automator, but not sure how to fire this from an smb link. Im guessing its a security feature of osx but who knows ! We want the end user to have to do as little or no changin to their system as possible so installing smbMount is already a pain !
Using Lepard, and safari4 or firefox3.5 (firefox has a few about:config changes to pass the link for smb urls to the smbMount app).
Any hints or solutions would help allot. We are windows and linux desktop converts for about 6 months and cant look back from the speed and simplicity of osx.