O Firefox e o IE8 suportam o esquema de URIs de arquivos .
Here are some examples valid for Windows systems, referring to the same file c:\WINDOWS\clock.avi
file://localhost/c|/WINDOWS/clock.avi
file:///c|/WINDOWS/clock.avi
file://localhost/c:/WINDOWS/clock.avi
file:///c:/WINDOWS/clock.aviEnquanto o último é o mais óbvio e legível por humanos, o primeiro é o mais completa e correta.
Aparentemente (do mesmo URL):
Mozilla browsers refuse to follow file URLs on a page that it has fetched with the HTTP protocol.
mas:
Mozilla browsers can be configured to override this security restriction as detailed in Mozillazine's "Links to Local Pages Don't Work".