Web Interface Should Register a Protocol Handler for RSS in Firefox

[barberousse]

Seems like a nice-to-have. Makes it easier to feverishly add subscriptions.. See the MDN page for how-to.

[Zegnat]

Previously mentioned in #45, with an MDN page specifically for RSS feeds.

[benubois]

Hey @barberousse and @Zegnat,

I've added some support for this. Right now it will only attempt to register the handler after a new account is created, which means existing customers won't have a chance to enable it.

If you call navigator.registerContentHandler every time you visit Feedbin, FireFox will show a status bar saying Feedbin is already registered. I'm not seeing a way to detect if a protocol handler has already been registered, which is probably a good privacy feature.

So I'm thinking either:

1. Feedbin sets a cookie the first time navigator.registerContentHandler gets called to avoid calling it again
2. Move the functionality to a button in settings

Option 2 might be good because navigator.registerContentHandler is a little intrusive. It shows a status bar asking if you want to use Feedbin as a handler, so it would be annoying if this showed up after you had already registered Feedbin or dismissed the dialogue. This would be pretty easy to do with option 1 if you cleared your cookies.

What sounds good to you guys?

[barberousse]

Mozilla suggests testing for previous registration like this (in Javascript):

var url = "http://starkravingfinkle.org/projects/wph/handler.php?value=%s";
if (!navigator.isProtocolHandlerRegistered("fake", url)) {
      navigator.registerProtocolHandler("fake", url, "Fake Protocol");
    }

Wouldn't that solve the problem? Is it not possible?

Edit: Sorry, accidentally hit close & comment

[Zegnat]

@barberousse, I don’t think that will work as it checks for registered protocols. Feed readers are not registered to handle protocols (there is no protocol for a feed, I think) but to handle a certain type of content (registerContentHandler).

There is a matching isContentHandlerRegistered method in the HTML Web application APIs spec, though I am not sure about browser support. Bugs: WebKit, Mozilla. Opera used to have it in 12.50, so they may or may not have implemented it in Blink already. But I do not think so.

Maybe something like this should be used, although in my minimum-scale testing no browsers supported it yet:

if ("registerContentHandler" in navigator) {
    // Check if the content handler is new to the user before we automatically prompt it:
    if ("isContentHandlerRegistered" in navigator &&
        navigator.isContentHandlerRegistered("application/vnd.mozilla.maybe.feed", "<%= "#{get_protocol}//#{request.host}" %>/?subscribe=%s") === "new") {
        navigator.registerContentHandler("application/vnd.mozilla.maybe.feed", "<%= "#{get_protocol}//#{request.host}" %>/?subscribe=%s", "Feedbin");
    }
    // Always add a button so users can trigger it themselves:
    // …
    button.onclick = function(){
        navigator.registerContentHandler("application/vnd.mozilla.maybe.feed", "<%= "#{get_protocol}//#{request.host}" %>/?subscribe=%s", "Feedbin");
    };
}

(Warning: untested.)

This should be used in addition to the :one_time_content, as Feedbin should always prompt new users on their first visit. The above code is more of a “coding for a future browser” kind of thing, but should automatically start to work when browsers catch up to the spec.

[rdrey]

Ah, I see. I had to manually run the JS because I created my account in Chrome, but then switched to Firefox.

[OJFord]

I agree, there are so many circumstances through which a user can 'miss' the opportunity to register - not least "I'm just trying it out, I'll do that later if I like it", which seems a fairly likely reason to dismiss it initially, and then never be shown it again.

Suggestion: somewhere in settings, have an option to 'add to FF as feed reader', which just runs this on click. If it's already working, a user won't click it and won't have the 'already registered' pop-up. Perhaps have it under 'Import/Export'.