Short summary: how to make MS Edge automatically open all links starting with ftp:// in Internet Explorer mode? Is it possible at all? (Could be also a command line switch, if one exists - I can just create a batch file that runs Edge with the needed parameter).
(By default, ftp:// links don't open in MS Edge - as in most other browsers - at all, if you didn't define a handler for them. They do open in IE mode, but only if you add the exact link to list of "Internet Explorer sites" in Edge - exact, means if you add ftp://some.server.address/ to the list, then that exact link will work, but ftp://some.server.address/directory/ won't - so it's just impossible to add all links for even one server)
Longer explanation:
As you probably know, Microsoft is starting to remove Internet Explorer from Windows. But there's a problem. IE is currently the only browser that supports the ftp:// type URLs. Both Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Chromium, Edge etc.) and Firefox stopped supporting them long ago.
I still often use ftp:// type links, so I set IE to be my ftp:// handler and it works perfectly :). But if IE will be removed, I would need another application. However, no FTP client that I have tested seamlessly supports all ftp:// links. Some of them support only links to directories, but not to files; some don't allow you to change default download location when downloading the file; some require the username to be present in the link for non-anonymous downloads (like ftp://[email protected]/...) which of course isn't present in the links that I have. Browser seems to behave best - URLs were designed for browsers, anyway...
So a possible option would be to use MS Edge with its Internet Explorer mode. But here comes the problem described above. I would have to add all possible links to Edge's "Internet Explorer sites" list. There seems to be no way to tell Edge "open all ftp:// links in IE mode". Can it be done?
edge://flags/#enable-ftp, but it's been recently removed in chromium