Morning

I've set up a small template based website/newsletter with a left hand navigation. All the other pages have been created from this template and for all intents and purposes is fine. The only issue i'm having is that when i add in the nav links for the fileshare e.g. \\ls-fileshare-05\health\xxxxxxx\rpm_transfer.html the link does not carry over to the linked pages and i end up with an :unknown in all the nav links on the pages.

Any ideas?

Regards

Tom

Also please note that this is all based on a local network.

Hi Tom,

For security reasons, most browsers do not allow you to link to local files or other server location files, even on an intranet.

Are you having trouble with Firefox (Mozilla), Internet Explorer or both?

See these other forums for examples and discussion:
http://www.thescripts.com/forum/thread3855.html
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Talk:Links_to_local_pages_do_not_work
http://www.jasonbartholme.com/2007/04/24/view-local-intranet-files-through-firefox/
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Links_to_local_pages_don't_work

There are settings that could possibly override both Firefox (Mozilla) and Internet Explorer for the links to work. Some of the sites above tell you how to do this.

However, be warned that doing some of these procedures could possibly be leaving your colleagues vulnerable to other attacks.

This may just involve adding your intranet url as a 'trusted site/source' in security permissions on everyone's browser. You could test this, and then perhaps add a list of steps your visitors should take if the link doesn't work for.

As an alternative, you could display the address they need to copy into their browser.

eg. Please copy and paste this URL into your browser:
ls-fileshare-05healthxxxxxxxrpm_transfer.html

Regards, Rich

Rich,

I've detached the template from the pages and have manually added the fileshare link onto each nav on the pages and it all seems to be working so i don't think its an issue with the links themselves or the browsers. This issue comes when i try and update all the links from the template. The Template links work but don't update the pages. Only way to get it to work is detach the tamplate and do it manually.

Cheers

This could be due to the way Dreamweaver does templates.

Dreamweaver stores your template in local folder /Templates. To work out a link from the root folder it sometimes puts ../ at the start of each 'local file' link (to get back out of the Templates folder to the root of the site). So the link might be okay in relation to the template, but not files based on the template, because they're not in the /Templates folder.

Load a templated page and a detached page into your browser and hover over the links with your mouse. Look at the status bar at the bottom of your browser to see where the browser is trying to take you. Are any differences between the two web pages?

Also try putting file: in front of the URL as this is supposed to tell the browser that you are linking to a file, not an online url.

Let me know how you go.

Regards, Rich

Rich,

The template is actually located on the fileshare (I'm working directly on the fileshare itself) where the pages are so i wouldn't think it would have trouble finding them.

Have also used the file: at the begining but doesn't seem to make a difference.

If i update a page from the template with the links on and then detach the template, the links on the page are showing unknown:.

Tom

Tom,

I've gotta go have lunch cause i'm starvin'.

I'll have a look at this a bit more when i get back.

Rich

No problem, it's working fine currently with all pages detached so its nothing urgent.

Hi Tom,

It's a bit hard to continue without actually looking at your files and dreamweaver setup etc.

The only thing I can think of at the moment is that you're using Relative linking rather than Absolute linking for those links. And Dreamweaver is trying to put what it thinks is the correct relative path before the path you specify.

Quick overview of rel vs abs linking...
eg. if you have a file in folder /products called product1.html and you want to link to index.html which is in the root, you can link to it Relatively: "../index.html" or Absolutely: "/index.html" (or "http://www.domain.com/index.html")

Did you check for any differences between template and detached pages for those links? Because surely they're going to different places when you hover over them in each file. How are they different?

Even though the template is on the fileshare, it would most likely still be in it's own /Template folder.

It could be a limitation with dreamweaver.

Regards, Rich