Non-http links.

[Justin Morgan]

Does anyone know if it is possible to add a link to a locally installed application, one that you would normally be able to run from a browser? I'm sorry, I do not know exactly what it is called, but one example of this is in Chrome. If you type chrome://settings in your Chrome address bar, it pulls up Chrome to the settings page. Another example of this is Steam. You can launch games by typing Steam://appID in the browser. When I try to create a link it either strips the link or tells me that the Space does not exist. Does anyone have any ideas? Thank you.

For clarification, the application already supports passing links to it in this manner. I am just having trouble adding the link to Confluence. Does anyone have any ideas? Thank you.

[Jason Plumhoff · Accepted solution]

I had the same problem. It's a browser security issue - browsers also prevent hyperlinking to files on your network shares. I heard there were plugins for various browsers to enable this capability, but I didn't want to stick my users with that. I ended up writing a little ASP utility that redirects incoming links. So I end up putting a link like this in Confluence:

Http://URLforRedirectUtility?REDIRECT=ActualURL

My ASP utility opens the link. I host the utility on one of our IIS web servers. Everything seems to work fine. I'd share the code, but it was written on company time so it isn't mine to give. But it was my first ever ASP program, and it was about 10 lines. A quick google search should give you everything you need.

[Ryan Goodwin]

Awesome solution, thanks very much for sharing!

[Jason Plumhoff]

Thanks! I should point out that I was doing this for use inside our firewall only. If I were going to put it outside the firewall, I'd probably try to prevent mischief by putting in some limits on what domains my ASP was allowed to redirect to...

[Justin Morgan]

Unfortunately, I have not had time to test this out, but this seems like the best way to go. Going to mark it as an answer and I will come back to it to confirm once I get the chance. Thanks a lot for the suggestion!

[Ryan Goodwin]

Hi Justin,

Have you tried Insert > Wiki Markup

Then format the link this way:

[link-text|Steam://appID]

[Justin Morgan]

Ryan, thank you for the suggestion but it looks like the link it creates shows greyed out as if it was an incorrect link. I will do some more testing with it, but I do not think it is possible this way.