Notes on the Mozzilla Web Browser

A "file://" link works with Internet Explorer, but does not work with Mozilla Firefox. Clicking on a "file://..." link from a remote "http://..." link doesn't do anything. No changes happen to the web page you're looking at and no error message is displayed.

If you open up the Javascript Console window (Tools->Web Development->Javascript Console), you'll see

but who knows enough to go look there?

A "file://..." link from a "file://..." web page, works fine.

See this 2001 Mozilla bug for the details why and background, and here for a way around it, that is,

  1. type "about:config" into the Location bar and hit Enter,
  2. Find the entry for security.checkloaduri,
  3. double-click (or right click->Modify) that line,
  4. and change its value to false.
  5. Then, shutdown all instances of the Mozilla browser and relaunch it.
p.s. You get the same non-error, non-action if I tried making that "about:config" in bullet 1 above, a <a href="about:config"> link. Ha ha.