Open a file using javascript, client-side

Question

In my application I want to open a file that exists on a client machine. I created two applications: desktop and web application. When the user installs the desktop application there are some files which is copied to its installation path, and I want to open those files from my web application via javascript.

Answer 1

The browser is insulated from the host machine (sandboxed) for security reasons.

The only way for the browser to access local files (apart from those inside the sandbox, ie. cookies and cache) is the HTML file control used by the user explicitly.