Web browsers cannot access the client computer file system or any mounted disk – they can talk only with Web servers (the reason is security: in some cases it is possible to read files, but writing files from a browser is definitely a no-no – imagine that any Web site you connect to could send commands to your browser to write stuff onto your hard disk).

If this is the case, how comes that the Web interface is actually able to create a file when an object is checked-out? The answer is that the browser is not writing the file, it is just sending a command to a separate program – the File4 service – that is the one actually getting the data and writing the file.

Where is File4 installed? There are various possibilities:

1. Directly on all the client machines

2. On a single shared server

3. On multiple shared servers – each one serving a group of clients

4. Mixed: some client machines have their own local File4, other use shared servers.

Whichever configuration is used a client and the File4 it uses must be on the same local network: File4 must read/write on disks that are visible (local or mounted network drives) by the client. This means that the case (2) above is possible only if all the clients are in the same local network.

See Editing Content with External Applications for further information.

See also

File4 service

File4 plug-ins