[whatwg] registerProtocolHandler() in HTML 5 is not sufficient for real use

[Ian Hickson]

On Tue, 28 Apr 2009, bryan rasmussen wrote:
> >
> > Generally speaking, the feature was intended for sites that wished to hook
> > into URLs provided by _other_ sites, e.g. webmail hooking into mailto:,
> > or web-based phone systems hooking into tel:. Only schemes that are actual
> > registered schemes are supposed to be used:
> >
> >   http://www.iana.org/assignments/uri-schemes.html
> >
> > This is not intended for sites that make up their own.
> 
> Is that written anywhere?
> 
> This cute and non-normative section implies otherwise:
> 
> ||[ Protocol Handler Registration ]|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
> |                                                            |
> | This Web page:                                             |
> |                                                            |
> |    Kittens at work                                         |
> |    http://kittens.example.org/                             |
> |                                                            |
> | ...would like permission to handle the protocol "x-meow:"  |
> | using the following Web-based application:                 |
> |                                                            |
> |    Kittens-at-work displayer                               |
> |    http://kittens.example.org/?show=%s                     |
> |                                                            |
> | Do you trust the administrators of the "kittens.example.   |
> | org" domain?                                               |
> |                                                            |
> |              ( Trust kittens.example.org )  (( Cancel ))   |
> |____________________________________________________________|

I've attempted to address this (in part by changing the example above, and 
in part by explicitly saying "This feature is not intended to be used with 
non-standard protocols"). Is the new text suitably clearer on this?

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'