[ANNOYANCE] Custom protocols that are not registered do not trigger browserBeforeNavigate correctly on windows.

[Andre Garzia]

Folks,

Sometimes do you want to create some fancy interface using RevBrowser and
want to communicate back with the stack that hosts the RevBrowsr view. One
quick way of doing this is to use custom protocols (so that you know that
url is yours) such as:

  myapp:refreshGui
  myapp:executeHandler/doStuff

For example, some construct like:

  <a href="myapp:refreshGui">Click here to Refresh GUI</a>

When that link is clicked, you could use a browserBeforeNavigate handler
such as this one:

  on browserBeforeNavigate pID, pURL
    set the itemdel to ":"
    if word 1 of pURL is "myapp" then
      -- our protocol!
      switch word 2 of pURL
        case "refreshGui"
          refreshGui
          break
      end switch
    put true into browserCancel
    end if
  end browserBeforeNavigate


This of course works great on Mac OS X and you can create your own browser
windows that trigger things back with no problem and you don't mix
http://or other protocols with your own, very elegant.

Now on Windows land (damn you Redmond!!!) things are different. It appears
that browserBeforeNavigate is only triggered afted IE renderer inspects the
URL. When it finds out a custom protocol, it checks to know if the system
can handle it. If you are using your own and haven't fiddled with Windows
Registry to register it, that check will fail and IE will change the damn
URL for you pointing to a internal windows dll page showing something like:
"Hey Fella, I don't know how to handle this!" which of course is an exercise
in patience since my own browserBeforeNavigate will prevent IE from even
trying to handle my own protocol.

This is not a RevBrowser BUG per se since RevBrowser is not doing anything,
it is IE again in its infinite wisdom trying to do things for you (which it
shouldn't). The only solution in these case is to add lots of Registry
information, registering your own protocol, which will probably make windows
try to relaunch your standalone for every of those links.

Damn, microsoft always makes my life harder!

Andre




-- 
http://www.andregarzia.com All We Do Is Code.