Putting a username and password in an URL   How many times have you given an FTP login, complete with address, login and password, to someone and they try to download the file using their web browser? For instance, you may send them to server: ftp.mysite.com username: joe password: friday directory: secretfolder And they immediately click on the ftp.mysite.com address and wonder why they can't see the file they're looking for. What they don't realize is that by clicking on the link they are saying they want to connect to the ftp server annonymously. The web browser passes the login/password of "annonymous" and they see whatever files you've specified as public, not the private file you put there for them. Telling them to use an FTP client, like CuteFTP on the PC or Transmit on the Mac, sometimes doesn't help either, as they neglect to put the username and password in before they hit connect, expecting to be prompted for the login. This can get aggravating fast, as I'm sure you have better things to do than teach people how to use their FTP software, so how can we make this easier for our friends? Let's place the username and password in the URL! While this does bring up some security concerns, someone could intercept the URL, find it among their "referred URL's" logs, or the user might bookmark the URL, if you disable the account after they have the file, you should be ok. Using the above FTP login example, this is how it should look: ftp://joe:friday@ftp.mysite.com/secretfolder/ Now they can just click on the link and stay in their happy, IE-powered world. :)