Linux Apache HTML http://username:password@domain.com/   syntax for protected page access via URLs

(This may or may not be the right category for this question)

IE6 introduced a restriction that disallows using the     user:pass@domain.com/resource     syntax to access  .htaccess-protected pages.

I have a client's web site that needs to transfer (redirect)  to a page on another of his sites using a "constructed" URL of this syntax.
(This is not a security risk/concern since the protection is only there in order to get his customers to send their email address so he can have a closed loop for verifying that he has a correct email address before they access his pages, and the pages are not at all secret)

Anyway, I'm looking for a server-side way to redirect where the user goes after they click on a form's SUBMIT.
Or somehow launder the URL to get access and then send them there without the user:pass@  syntax.
Originally, this was a simple client-side javascript concatenation (to construct the user:pass@ syntax) that worked fine until the IE6 restriction.
I cannot use PHP header( Refresh) since that goes thru IE in order to point the browser to the new site.
(fwiw, i have examples of both javascript and PHP solutions that still work fine on firefox, etc.)

Any thoughts about somehow getting a link to go to the protected page (which by the way is not up for editing, so we're stuck with htaccess protection)

thanks
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