The recent Chrome 5.0 release completely blocks XMLHTTPRequest requests for local files comming from a local file. Here is just one of the many related bug reports and here is the code change (there is also a SO question caused by this).

This breaks a lot of production code, e.g. for documentation systems. Users must be able to browse local documentation without the need to install anything or run executables.

My question is if there is any way around this restriction? I'm only interested in solutions that don't require any fancy actions on the users side (nothing beyond a confirmation dialog). Is there any way the HTML5 File API could be used, or maybe postMessage()?

Of course this whole issue is very frustrating for many people. Firefox takes a fare more reasonable approach and allows requests inside the directory. So it seems unlikely that other browser vendors will follow Chrome.