Protocol handler?
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@julian I write about this here: near zero mobile browser support but strong desktop browser support- and I suggest a JavaScript fallback for the others …. https://www.timothychambers.net/2025/06/24/the-seven-deadly-fediverse-ux.html
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I'm going to register a protocol handler, so links to anywhere on the fedi will be opened in the user's home instance.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/registerProtocolHandler
Has anyone already done this and if so what was the prefix you used? We might as well all use the same thing. I'm thinking
web+fedi.@rimu web+acct
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I'm going to register a protocol handler, so links to anywhere on the fedi will be opened in the user's home instance.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/registerProtocolHandler
Has anyone already done this and if so what was the prefix you used? We might as well all use the same thing. I'm thinking
web+fedi.It's a good idea, but
fediis maybe too broad to be useful? I wouldn't want a Lemmy post to open in Mastodon, and pretty sure opening a Mastodon post in Lemmy is impossible unless the post was directed to a community.web+threadiversecould solve that issue but that's kinda hacky. Maybe the real solution is to improve Lemmy and Mastodon so that they are capable of doing these things decently.I was actually thinking of making a browser extension that handles this instead. Each Fediverse software could write something to
window.fediverseor something like that, with tags for group support or micro blogging. The extension could have methods to infer these values for existing platforms. But the extension could give a dialog box to redirect, based on your preferred instances for certain tags. -
@rimu web+acct
What does acct stand for?
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What does acct stand for?
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I'm going to register a protocol handler, so links to anywhere on the fedi will be opened in the user's home instance.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/registerProtocolHandler
Has anyone already done this and if so what was the prefix you used? We might as well all use the same thing. I'm thinking
web+fedi.web+ap, which was proposed by Fedilink authors. To my knowledge, it is the most widely adopted proposalhttps://web.archive.org/web/20250402041648/https://fedilinks.org/
(the main site seems to be offline now)
cc @SoniEx2
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web+ap, which was proposed by Fedilink authors. To my knowledge, it is the most widely adopted proposalhttps://web.archive.org/web/20250402041648/https://fedilinks.org/
(the main site seems to be offline now)
cc @SoniEx2
Are there implementors of web+ap? I'd be interested in adopting.
I assume the fallback behaviour is to just assume https?
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@julian Fedilinks website lists 3 MastoAPI clients, but the list is incomplete. I saw Fedilinks being mentioned in changelogs of other clients too.
There was also an Akkoma PR, it was closed by the author: https://akkoma.dev/AkkomaGang/akkoma/pulls/589. I don't quite understand the reasoning, perhaps @smitten could clarify.
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@julian Fedilinks website lists 3 MastoAPI clients, but the list is incomplete. I saw Fedilinks being mentioned in changelogs of other clients too.
There was also an Akkoma PR, it was closed by the author: https://akkoma.dev/AkkomaGang/akkoma/pulls/589. I don't quite understand the reasoning, perhaps @smitten could clarify.
The PR comments suggest that making the various changes to the backend were too large to justify, and a front-end only approach would be preferred? [email protected]
It raises a good point though, where if you serve
web+ap://, it's not understood by clients that are not aware of this scheme. If there were a way a client could communicate whether there is a protocol handler registered, then the server could tailor its response. -
Glad to see more people having this idea! The problems we ran into were in helping the browser understand the address and know where to forward. Each server implements lookup routes differently, so there's not necessarily a generic path that you can trust is available on https on the person's home server, even if you know their home server origin. So in some ways the feature should be offered by your home server software, maybe offering a website that does the handler registration to its known lookup/redirect address.
But that is limiting in a few ways. It's a lot of extra steps for each person to do (browsers' default UI for registering protocols is not obvious or easy). It doesn't carry over to different devices, and if you have more than one home server in some way, you are back dealing with that not-great browser UI to pick which handler you want.
In general people are more accustomed to registering protocols to apps they have installed, especially phone apps. It's much easier to register them there and you don't have to have approval flow UI, but taking that approach moves this whole served handler route out of the backend again, so we have to start thinking more along the lines of web+ap-compatible servers that handler clients know how to call or bounce to.
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] -
Glad to see more people having this idea! The problems we ran into were in helping the browser understand the address and know where to forward. Each server implements lookup routes differently, so there's not necessarily a generic path that you can trust is available on https on the person's home server, even if you know their home server origin. So in some ways the feature should be offered by your home server software, maybe offering a website that does the handler registration to its known lookup/redirect address.
But that is limiting in a few ways. It's a lot of extra steps for each person to do (browsers' default UI for registering protocols is not obvious or easy). It doesn't carry over to different devices, and if you have more than one home server in some way, you are back dealing with that not-great browser UI to pick which handler you want.
In general people are more accustomed to registering protocols to apps they have installed, especially phone apps. It's much easier to register them there and you don't have to have approval flow UI, but taking that approach moves this whole served handler route out of the backend again, so we have to start thinking more along the lines of web+ap-compatible servers that handler clients know how to call or bounce to.
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]Also I want to highlight this excellent comment by Yumechi about fingerprinting and de-anonymization risks.
https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/fep-07d7-a-custom-url-scheme-and-web-based-protocol-handlers-for-linking-to-activitypub-resources/3588/53
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] -
Also I want to highlight this excellent comment by Yumechi about fingerprinting and de-anonymization risks.
https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/fep-07d7-a-custom-url-scheme-and-web-based-protocol-handlers-for-linking-to-activitypub-resources/3588/53
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]@smitten_ Do you know what is the status of Fedlilinks? Has it been abandoned?
FEP-07d7 was withdrawn, and other proposals have even less support than these two. -
@julian I write about this here: near zero mobile browser support but strong desktop browser support- and I suggest a JavaScript fallback for the others …. https://www.timothychambers.net/2025/06/24/the-seven-deadly-fediverse-ux.html
@[email protected] @[email protected] You're absolutely right about the mobile browsers sadly, but support on mobile apps is good. The UX there is better than it is on desktop browsers too, because it can be registered in the app manifest and doesn't require complicated approval and handler selection flows. People are also more familiar with links that look a certain way opening in their related app, it's just that they expect the behavior at the host level instead of the protocol level.
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I'm going to register a protocol handler, so links to anywhere on the fedi will be opened in the user's home instance.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/registerProtocolHandler
Has anyone already done this and if so what was the prefix you used? We might as well all use the same thing. I'm thinking
web+fedi.[email protected] I've been using web+acct for the acct URI format.
