Using Open URL to connect to FTP sites

[jonesy17]

Here's the situation:

One database, nothing fancy, with a couple of text fields: UserID and PassWord

One calculation field (ftpURL) goes like this:

"ftp://" & UserID & ":" & PassWord & "@ftp.myftpsite.com"

Then created a script called ftpURLscript with the following:

Open URL [No dialog, "ftpURL"]

THEN made a button that performs the ftpURLscript script.

AND THEN... sharing this database via Instant Web Publishing.

Problem (and you thought I'd never get here): any user connecting via Internet Explorer on a MAC can click on the link and get connected to the FTP site just fine. But PC users are running into a problem where instead of attempting to connect to "ftp.mysite.com" as UserID Explorer is instead attempting to connect to "ftp://UserID/" as anonymous.

Anybody have any clue why? I know my URL is formatted properly and even experimented with adding a valid folder name to the end of the URL with no luck. I expected this to work better on a PC than a Mac but it seems the tables have been turned!

Any help is appreciated...

Robert

[Garry Claridge]

How does it work if you place the url string directly into the address bar of the PC browser? You may be able to experiment with this a bit.

Good Luck.

Garry

[jonesy17]

Right, I meant to mention that but forgot. If I copy and paste the result of the ftpURL calculation right into the browser, it works fine!

I found something on Microsoft's support site that says this is a known error with IE 5.0 running on Win NT 4.0 and that the fix is to upgrade to IE 5.01. Well if they fixed it in 5.01 they broke it again by the time they got to 5.5, which is what I'm using.

Can anyone out there try this with IE 6.x? I don't want to upgrade 300 PCs if I don't have to...

[jonesy17]

I've tried this at home just now with Filemaker 6 and Internet Explorer 6 under both Windows XP Home and Win 98... and it works just fine.

I guess I'm going to have to upgrade 300 PCs after all!

Robert

[jonesy17]

FYI

Months later I have discovered that the majority of my problem had to do with the passwords containing the # symbol. IE6 and Win2K didn't like that very much. :-)

Robert

[jonesy17]

One database, nothing fancy, with a couple of text fields: UserID and PassWord

One calculation field (ftpURL) goes like this:

"ftp://" & UserID & ":" & PassWord & "@ftp.myftpsite.com"

Then created a script called ftpURLscript with the following:

Open URL [No dialog, "ftpURL"]

THEN made a button that performs the ftpURLscript script.

AND THEN... sharing this database via Instant Web Publishing.

OK, this all works just fine and dandy provided the password doesn't contain any super-wiggy characters like the # symbol.

However, I would now like to get this to open in a new window that DOES NOT display the menubar, statusbar, addressbar, toolbar etc...

I've tried adding "javascript:void(window.open("address.htm","windowname","attributes"))" (note: syntax may not be exactly right as I'm going from memory not copying and pasting) to the equation, but the javascript requires the " mark as part of the URL and this throws my calculation field into a tizzy.

Any suggestions???

Robert