Re: Deployment of new URI schemes (was Re: request for a new URL scheme)

[ZB Lucas <[e-mail]>]

> Browsers should allow users to specify proxies that handle specific
> URI schemes, possibly new schemes.  Netscape, for one, still assumes
> that any URI with a scheme it does not know about is a relative
> URL, and it has no way to specify proxies to handle specific new
> schemes.   Mosaic for X has fixed these problems, partly at my
> insistence.

right now the win95 shell supports any sort of URL protocol.  if you do a 
ShellExec on a valid URL, the shell will look in the registry for a 
handler of that protocol.  and then pass it off to them.  both NS2.0 and 
MSIE take advantage of this.  it also permits apps to register themselves 
as handlers for a MIME type.

this means that a user can go to the start-run menu and enter 
"http://www.home.com" and clik OK and it will activate the correct app 
and display the desired page.

MSIE is smart enough that whenever it runs across a protocol that it 
doesnt recognize, it always does a shellexec to see if anybody on the 
system knows how to handle it. 

so if someone wanted to, they could easily implement a link like 
"mud:bestmud.com:8080" in a web page and if someone were running MSIE on 
win95 it would passed off to the mud client.  i believe there is even an 
option to pass the URL with or without the protocol prefixed.

{zeke}