Does anyone have a good work around for using file protocol in an href that will work with non-IE browsers?

For example, if one uses <a href="file://///whatever">Whatever</a> IE correctly locates and displays the local/network directory called "whatever". Mozzilla, Firefox and Opera don't seem to do anything. However, if you paste the file ref into the address bar of moz/firefox it correctly displays the resource; you can even bookmark it. But you can't use href?

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Mozilla and Internet explorer on Windows should both interpret the five slash syntax correctly, Opera will want two slashes, as in:

<a href="file://remote_server/directory/">

Opera also swaps in a '/localhost/' whenever browsing the local machine's directory structure.

be aware that what behaviour you actually get will depend very heavily on your local machine settings, as well, though.

Dan