Launch a Windows File Explorer window from a webpage

Question

I work in phone support for a company that released a new program that stores some data in the users appdata folder.

Our knowledge base has been updated with steps for users to turn on show hidden/system files and then steps users through opening the folders.

As a lot of our software users are not IT 'savvy', it takes a long time walking them through.

With HTML, Javascript or some kind of plug in, is it possible to make a link on a page that will launch a Windows File Explorer window navigated to %localappdata% ?

This way the user will always end up in the right place without all the steps they find difficult.

Answer 1

No, it isn't possible to launch an external program from within a web page.

If you could do it, it would be considered a massive security risk, and would quickly be blocked by the browser makers.

Years ago, there used to be ways to achieve this sort of thing via ActiveX controls, but that is no longer an option, largely due to the security issues it caused.

The only browser that ever supported ActiveX was IE; it doesn't work at all in any of the other browsers, and even IE defaults to block unknown ActiveX controls these days.

In short, you aren't going to be able to do this. Sorry.

Answer 2

I don't believe this is possible with just HTML / javascript because of permission / security

One possibility is to create a ActiveX control to launch Windows Explorer.

Building ActiveX Controls for Internet Explorer

Wikipedia - ActiveX

Answer 3

You could have users download and run a batch file with something like this in it:

%windir%\explorer.exe %LOCALAPPDATA%

You could even configure the batch file to copy files to a more convenient place, like the desktop.