Kosta has pretty much covered it. Web Intents as well as current browser implementations are heavily geared towards web-based protocol handling, potentially at the expense of external handlers.
The final question in my initial e-mail " Should it be better aligned with web-based protocol handling? If so, how?" was intended to allude to that - I probably should have been more specific. -----Original Message----- From: Konstantin Welke Sent: Monday, March 31, 2014 7:01 AM To: James Greene; Ben Johnson Cc: [email protected]; Kenneth Auchenberg; Mathieu Hofman Subject: Re: Proposal: External Protocol Handling Hi! I think the biggest difference is that web intents work between web pages, whereas this is used to launch installed programs on the user’s computer. Think about this use case: A web page with a list of ssh hosts. When you click on a link, the JS on the page calls navigator.launchUri(“ssh://hostname”) to try to launch your SSH agent. If a handler for the “ssh://“ protocol is installed, it presents the user with a dialog window to ask whether they want to launch their SSH client (e.g. “PuTTY" on Windows, ssh in a terminal on Mac, Unix*). If the user accepts, the SSH client is launched and the JS successCallback is executed; If the user rejects or no SSH client is registered, the SSH client is not launched and the noHandlerCallback is executed. Currently, one can do that using a plain link or an iframe - however the user experience is pretty bad if e.g. no protocol handler client is installed (depending on the browser). Each browser has different gotchas and limitations that we currently need to work around. We would like to have a stable, well-defined API for this that also allows to handle the “user declined / protocol handler is not installed” case gracefully. As an example, the web page could show a UI to tell the user how to install an SSH client. Cheers, Kosta PS: Sorry for the long signature... -- Konstantin Welke Senior Software Developer Citrix Online Germany GmbH | Erzbergerstr. 117 | D-76133 Karlsruhe T: +49 721 3544990 | F: +49 721 354499624 | M: +49 151 23429318 [email protected] http://www.citrixonline.com <http://www.citrixonline.com/> Work better. Live better. Citrix Online Germany GmbH | Erzbergerstr. 117 | D-76133 Karlsruhe Geschäftsführer: Tommy Ahlers | Michael DiFilippo | David Zalewski Sitz der Gesellschaft: Karlsruhe | Registergericht: Amtsgericht Mannheim HRB 713721 Citrix Online UK Ltd <http://www.citrixonline.com/imprint-en.tmpl> On Monday, March 31, 2014 at 3:04 PM, James Greene <[email protected]> wrote: Would this be similar to the Web Intents spec proposal that Google was championing (based on Android Intents)? Sincerely, James Greene On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 5:52 PM, Ben Johnson <[email protected]> wrote: Hi all, I’ve been working on a draft specification for a creating a dedicated cross-browser external protocol launching standard based on the behavior of msLaunchUri in Internet Explorer. The draft is here: http://bengjohnson.github.io/ExternalProtocolSpecification.html <http://bengjohnson.github.io/ExternalProtocolSpecification.html> I’m looking for feedback from the web app group members on: · What major concerns to you have with the overall approach? o Do you feel there are insufficient motivating factors for a change to be made? o Are there unstated concerns missing from the document? · What level of detail are you expecting for a complete proposal? · Should it be better aligned with web-based protocol handling? If so, how? · And of course, any particular issues with the document in its current form. Thanks, Ben
