Send file:// links to team members through browser, have them open in Finder Scenario: A 10 person creative team works on PSD and InDesign files. The files are on a local server on the office. The people are in the office, too, and access the server through the Finder. They regularly make changes to the files on the server and need to tell somebody else about it. The other person wants to navigate to the files quickly without traversing the deep folder hierarchy in finder.

I created a OSX service a while ago that let you select a file in finder, press a shortcut and paste a file:// link (or was ist smb://? I can't remember right now) in iChat. The receiving person could click that link, a Finder window opened with the correct file selected. Very convenient!

Now the team abandoned iChat and uses Slack. So the browser is the place the link is clicked. How can I implement something like this in a browser? I want people to be able to click a link and have a finder window open in the correct location on the server.

My initial research says that it can't be done because file:// links don't really work from browsers. Or Firefox tries to open the file directly instead of showing it in Finder.

Ideas:


Browser extension (FF, Chrome, Safari)? I don't know enough about their APIs and how they relate to the OS file system.
A droplet that you can drag a link on to? That is less convenient than clicking though.


Do you have other ideas?
Either of these should work and launch right into the Finder without launching a browser. You can test it in Slack by directly messaging Slackbot and clicking the link in the feed.

smb://servername/shared/folder/to/the/destination/

afp://servername/folder/path/to/the/directory/