Accessing local machine using Internet

I am wondering there is rarely a way to access local machine through Internet.

While working on online spell checker, I came across editing feature to allow user to load and to save document from/to local system.

It is really not a big deal for IE. What we have to do is just to use ActivexObject with javascript. Though this is accessing local machine is not considered secure way for browser. Other browsers are not allowing doing so.

What I am doing is: I am taking input type as file. Which is opening file dialog. When I select file in IE it takes full path where as in firefox is taking only file name. That is the bug of Firefox 3. :(

I'll post here as soon as I come up with the solution for this.