I would like to run a program from a web page link, does anyone know how to do this?

For example, say I want to run the notepad.exe and pass it a file to edit does anyone know if it is possible to create a link in html that would run it? i.e., notepad.exe mytextfile.txt

I've tried various forms of,

a href="file://C:/windows/notepad.exe mytextfile.txt"

(I've left out the <> so it could be posted here.)

but it doesn't work. Any ideas? Thanks!!!!!!!!

Bob