Newbie Networking Question

[Alan]

I know this is going to sound really really dumb, but here goes ...

I'm trying to find an alternative to a file manager approach to
accessing files stored on a locally networked machine.

Is it possible using some sort of web front-end to have those files open
in their native application instead of a browser window? For example, a
link to a PDF file would open in Acrobat instead of IE + Acrobat Plugin,
a JPG file would open in ACDSee, and a text document would open in
Notepad.

If someone can point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks.

 

[unexciting]

there's a couple of choices i'd look at (I assume you want
to write to files as well)

1) run a ftp server
this would be the 'traditional' way of accessing files
across a network. access files with ftp://ftp.server.com
urls. control access by userid. iis has an ftp server.
easiest to setup.

2) run a web app.
plenty of asp/php (web scripting languages) to do this and
more. google for "groupware". you'll need to play with web
server config a bit and run an db backend.

 

[Alan]

there's a couple of choices i'd look at (I assume you want
to write to files as well)

1) run a ftp server
this would be the 'traditional' way of accessing files
across a network. access files with ftp://ftp.server.com
urls. control access by userid. iis has an ftp server.
easiest to setup.

2) run a web app.
plenty of asp/php (web scripting languages) to do this and
more. google for "groupware". you'll need to play with web
server config a bit and run an db backend.

That's what exactly the answer I was hoping for.

Thanks for the reply.