(Possible) Microsoft Dirty Trick (fwd)

["George J.P. Perry" <geoperry@iww.org>]

I don't have the software to test the following; the author, though,
operated NirvanaNet's &totse bbs (which is to say that I think him a
reliable sort of kook (as though you were to rely on me)). -g

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 09:44:23 -0800
From: enigma <enigma@totse.com>
Reply-To: pigdog-l@arlington.com
To: pigdog-l@arlington.com,
    "nnstuff@lists.best.com" <nnstuff@lists.best.com>
Subject: [Pigdog] Microsoft Dirty Tricks

My office uses Microsoft Office 97 (SR 2) as a company standard. They also
use Netscape Navigator 4.04 as a company standard. Yesterday I showed my
boss how to create hyperlinks to internet/intranet pages from within a Word
document because he wanted to capture some stats in a report and I
mentioned that I had an internal web page that gave real-time stats. Now he
can distribute a document with stats as of a given date, and people reading
the report can also click on the link and get stats real-time.

Pretty cool, eh?

Here's the dirty trick: If Microsoft Internet Explorer is the default
browser on the computer, everything works fine.

If Netscape Navigator is the default browser, you'll get a Microsoft Office
warning on the screen that "Some files can contain viruses or otherwise be
harmful to your computer. It is important to be certain that this file is
from a trustworthy source. Would you like to open this file?" (This message
does not appear when Microsoft Internet Explorer is your default browser.)

Then, if you click yes, it proceeds to load another instance of Navigator,
and then sometimes Navigator crashes and sometimes it doesn't. If, however,
you IMMEDIATELY EXIT MS WORD AFTER CLICKING ON YES (before Navigator is
fully loaded), then Navigator will load with the page with no problems. It
appears that some bit of software within Word is causing Navigator to crash
and making it look like a problem with Navigator.

I'm not sure what happens if you have both Navigator and Internet Explorer
loaded on the same machine. I used two different machines for these tests.

If anyone wants to try this out, create a Word document, type something in,
highlight what you typed, and then click on the "Hyperlink" button (a small
globe with two chain links on it). Type the URL you want to link to in the
top box, and click OK. You have now created a link within your Word
docuemnt. Click the link and it should start up your default browser and
load the page.


enigma@totse.com      enigma@nirvananet.org      enigma@pigdog.org
http://www.totse.com  http://www.nirvananet.org  http://www.pigdog.org