First of all, am I the only Windows NT 4.0 user left on this planet? I wonder if there is a web site devoted to dinosaurs like me?
Anyway, I think the answer I am seeking is probably also relevant to other later MS operating systems, but I don't know.
The reason I am still using NT is because this computer has been a real workhorse, it is amazing how it lasts and lasts (I guess I have been using it for about 9 years). Anyway, I am STILL discovering new things about it, even now.
The latest version of Windows Media Player I am officially allowed to use on this is version 6.4. Compared to later yucky versions I have seen, this one is nice and small and simple. If I have an mp3 file in a folder, I can just drop the icon onto the player and it will start playing. I recently discovered a web site that had a list of mp3 files. If I click on those links, my browser (firefox 2.0.0.17) tries to play them in a new TAB of the browser using quicktime, which fails because I don't have the latest quicktime plugin for the browser (I have kind of resigned myself to no longer expecting these latest versions to work under my operating system). But all I need to do is download each file to a folder on my machine, then play it with my WMP 6.4. This works just fine. But lately I have been playing around with these things called shortcuts. Do you know, that an internet shortcut is simply a text file whose name ends in ".URL" (but the '.URL' does not show up, even if I have the setting set so all extensions show up). If you examine the text of this file, it will look something like this:
[InternetShortcut]
URL=http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php?action=post;board=1.0
If I drag the icon at the start of the address in my address-bar of my browser and drop it into a folder, that's what the text file deposited would look like. That's all an internet shortcut is, just a text file like that. But then I was thinking, you know, I can actually play a file on the internet via my mplayer by going to 'open' in the File drop down, and then typing the URL of the mp3 file there. Wow, I knew that existed but I don't know if I had ever tried that before. It worked! So, I could download these files I find interesting, then drop them onto my mplayer. Or I could just leave them where they are, and leave shortcuts to them in my folder. That's an idea I like better, it saves me having to use up all that space on my hard drive to store these mp3 files. Why not leave them up on the internet? So I got to this point: How do I create shortcuts to mp3 files located on the internet such that when I double-click on those shortcuts, my windows media player starts up and then plays those files on the internet. I thought, could I just change the string located after the 'URL=' in that text file which is an internet shortcut. No, when I try that, it tries bringing up a browser and playing it through the browser. I don't want to do that. Well, I right-clicked on the icon of this internet shortcut and choose properties. Here I get this dialog box with 3 tabs, the right-most tab being Web Document. After URL: is just that url I had changed in the text file, to the location of the mp3 file on the internet. But there is also this button labeled "Change icon". I didn't really care about changing the icon but I clicked it just to see what it was. Well what do you know, this opens up a new dialog box which not only allows one to change the icon, but it also allows one to change the name of the application that is called to open the file you have specified. This is exactly what I was looking for! So I changed that to "C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\mplayer2.exe". Ok, now you would think it would work, wouldn't you? Well, no such luck. Windows STILL tries to bring up the browser when I double-click on this shortcut icon. Well, that pretty obviously is some kind of screw up in this version of Microsoft's Operating system, to which I will be told, well, you've got to byte the bullet and get a later version operating system. No, sorry I don't give up that easily. I then used the Options menu item which is available from 'View' at the top of any window's folder. From here you can go to 'File Types' tab (what better place to put this then under 'View', right Microsoft?
). And get this humongous list of different file types. Well, when you get down to file types starting with 'Windows Media', you find there is a 'Windows Media Audio / Video shortcut', which has an extension of ASX, and then there is a file type of 'Windows Media Audio shortcut', which has an extension of WAX. Wow, I've never even heard of a file with an extension like that! Could that be it? Oh by the way, before this I had tried something else. I simply changed the extension of the shortcut file I was working on to '.mp3', thinking maybe I needed to do that for windows to recognized I wanted it to be played locally and not bring up the browser. Well, no such luck. Now with this new knowledge of WAX, I then tried changing the extension to '.wax'. This still did not work. By the way, there is also a 'Windows Media Audio/Video shortcut', which has an extension of WVX. Could that be what I am looking for? Who knows. The search for the elusive answer continues...
ps - Another possibility: When I double click on the shortcut, the operating system sees this file that begins with [InternetShortcut]. Perhaps when it sees that it automatically assumes it should open the browser. Perhaps there is some other keyword I need to put there. But where would I find such information. Using the HELP Microsoft offers on this machine is totally unhelpful for questions like this.
