Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

URI format for shared local files

  • 1 reply
  • 1 has this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by philipp

more options

Firefox uses this format to access shared files on a local network... file://///host/path eg file://///computername/sharename/MyDocs/filename.txt.

This format is different from the standard form file://host/path that is used on other browsers eg Windows, Chrome.

This means that Firefox does not give me access to shared files when I have coded the standard format URI into my local HTML documents. Why is Firefox different or non-standard.

Firefox uses this format to access shared files on a local network... file://///host/path eg file://///computername/sharename/MyDocs/filename.txt. This format is different from the standard form file://host/path that is used on other browsers eg Windows, Chrome. This means that Firefox does not give me access to shared files when I have coded the standard format URI into my local HTML documents. Why is Firefox different or non-standard.

Chosen solution

hello seebee, apparently file://///host/path is the standard form for a unc path:

"That's five slashes - two for the protocol, one to indicate the root of the file system, then two more to indicate the start of the server name." https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5317834/workaround-for-href-file-in-firefox

it is also explained in this bug from 2001: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=66194#c8

Read this answer in context 👍 0

All Replies (1)

more options

Chosen Solution

hello seebee, apparently file://///host/path is the standard form for a unc path:

"That's five slashes - two for the protocol, one to indicate the root of the file system, then two more to indicate the start of the server name." https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5317834/workaround-for-href-file-in-firefox

it is also explained in this bug from 2001: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=66194#c8