Non-working link mystery

This morning a friend sent me an e-mail containing a link to a simple tic-tac-toe game. When I clicked on the link, though, it didn't work. So I copied and pasted it into the Google address bar and it worked there. But when I tried to pass it along to other friends, the link didn't appear to be a working link and it looks the same here (see below), as though it's again a non-working link. Why?

http://stuff.pyzam.com/toys/tictacscare.swf

As for the tic-tac-toe game itself, try it. It's easy and it's fun.

Edit: I see than in Preview mode the link appears the way it should, as a working link, but in the initial composing box it didn't. Again, why?

 

Thanks for replying.

In addition to wanting to share having some fun, I really was curious why the link in my friend's message didn't work and my first draft here didn't show the link as "live. "

 

That's what I wound up doing when I sent the thing off to some friends. It seems to have worked OK.

I suspect that your explanation of why the link in the source message didn't work is correct. Thanks for the replies.