The proposed solution seems to be Windows-only. A cross-platform
solution would be nice, but Unix systems don't have registries :(
There are also important security issues to consider. A malicious web
page could easily trick a user into a clicking an URL with an "unknown"
protocol and thus cause a certain program to be executed.
At present, the mozilla ScriptSecurityManager
checks access privileges for the protocols it knows about. The
proposed mechanism could bypass these checks.
I looked into the external protocol handler issues in writing Protozilla
(http://protozilla.mozdev.org) and realized that a cross-platform
solution requires an UI, rather than just a helper app protocol.
The UI could be part of the Preferences dialog or something like
that.
Saravanan
