Getting linked assets to open natively

Guys and girls. A little help if possible... please

I have an educational resource disc that is under construction, with numerous links to user assets (mostly word docs and a couple of pdfs).

I have tested the UI on various platforms (windows and Mac) and browsers (IE, Mozilla, Chrome, Safari & Opera) and get a variety of results... Some open the word docs in word (desired effect), some open the doc in the browser window, and others take me to the desktop file tree.

It would be 'really' nice if there is a snippet of code somewhere out there that will make all browsers & platforms open the files in their native programme, anyone know what it is?

If there is no simple fix, then i guess no biggie... can't think there will be too many teachers opening up the disc on more than one platform/browser.

Thanx in advance.
Ozwaldo

It would be 'really' nice

What do you mean 'really' nice? Is there some irony that I've missed there?

Unfortunately there isn't really a way to control this. You could force a download if the file is located on a server; otherwise, I'm not aware of a way to bring them into line.

Thanx Apostropartheid.
No irony intended, just frustration of sorts...
The source files will be stored and access form a dvd, so i guess i'll just have to live with it. Not the worst problem ever.

Well why not show a little bit of the content of the disc on a website and offer the disc for download as a binary? Shouldn't be too hard as there are alot of code examples out there for the Windows platform and you have most of the work done already. From there on you could support Apple and Linux also but that's a whole nother ball game.