Internet Explorer integration with Adobe Illustrator

[Rah...@adobeforums.com]

For developing a small application using Illustrator (CS or 10), I am trying to figure out:
1) How to open an Illustrator document in Internet Explorer.
The link to the file (present on a web server) is made available using a HTML link. On clicking this link, IE option box pops up to save the file or open the file. Is there a way to always open the file directly in IE without prompting the user?

2) The user can edit the file in Illustrator and saves the file
No issue here :)

3) How to let Internet Explorer know that the Illustrator has saved the file, so that the file can be uploaded back (if there are any changes).

It seems Illustrator is OLE compliant so an activex control might be able to do 1) and 3). How can I program this?

[LenH...@adobeforums.com]

>>Is there a way to always open the file directly in IE without prompting
the user?<<

No. That would break the 'rules' and allow virus files to be spread even
more quickly that they are now...

>>How to let Internet Explorer know that the Illustrator has saved the
file<<

You can't......the web is stateless. It only knows about the current page,
and variables specifically passed by the current page, but I think you could
have the web server re-direct to an upload page on completion of the
download with some clever server-side code.

You would, anyway, require server-side support in order to upload the file
to the web server.

You would be better posting this question in the GoLive forum rather than
here in Illustrator. Any solution would apply to any file-type, not just an
Illustrator file.

[Rah...@adobeforums.com]

1. Apparently the "rules" are in place for unknown mime types. For known mime types, the "save" can be bypassed.

The following page shows how to "raise" a download box for known mime types.
<http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http>://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q260/5/19.ASP&NoWebContent=1

2. Since the file is opened in AI (have already created an activex control to handle this). The easiest way to tell that the file has been saved is to call a function from a custom AI plugin (which fires on the file save event).

As is apparent this thinking means that the solution is very illustrator specific...