Browsing articles from "July, 2009"
Web application URI Schemes
Operating systems allow applications register a URI Scheme and associate that with a specific application. When a user clicks a link with that scheme the associated application is opened to process the request. For example, the mailto-scheme opens your default email application, the skype-scheme opens up skype and calls the person or number provided in the link.
It hit me today that what the web needs are web application specific URI Schemes. Take twitter for example. There are a number of “retweet”-buttons appearing in blogs, allowing users to share a interesting blog post through twitter. That’s all good, but what if I don’t use Twitter.com to post my tweets? What if I want to use TwitHive or PeopBrowsr to do all of my tweets? Currently we’re stuck with what the blogs owner defined as the URL for the retweet-button.
Or what if my primary mail is web-based? Clicking on a mailto: -link will still open up by default email program on my desktop which is absolutely useless, as I don’t have an account created there.
So what we need is the ability to asociate a application URI Scheme with a specific web application in addition to a desktop application. Simplified it could work something like this:
I load up GMail. My browser recognises that the page loaded up contains metadata that tells that it can handle the mailto: URI Scheme. Somewhere in the browsers chrome a small button appears notifying me that the mailto: – URI Scheme is currently not bound the GMail, but to a desktop application. I can click that button and after a confirmation my browser will now load up all mailto: links with a URL provided by GMail.
But this is merely the beginning! What about associating file types with web applications? Everybody’s familiar with the fact that double-clicking a .doc – file will load up Word. It would again be quiet easy to associate file types with web applications. What if you’d like to use a web-based image editing application, say SUMO, Picnik or Aviary? Just log into any of these apps, and let your browser associate jpeg’s png’s and gifs with that specific application. Double-clicking any image file will load it up in your preferred web app.
Now that would make web apps first-class citizens. Honk if you’d like to see this happening!
3 Comments
Follow me on Twitter!
Other services
Honk!
Yes please.
I would like to Introduce http://www.Fatpaint.com a free, full featured, online graphic design software for doing layered painting, vector drawing, photo editing and page layout. It’s the first Flash based painting program with full support for pressure sensitive Pen Tablets.
Fatpaint has more drawing and painting features than any other online graphics application, and it has built-in thousands of graphical resources.