Re: Steps to creating a browser standard for the moz-icon:// scheme

On Jan 26, 2010, at 7:08 AM, Pierre-Antoine LaFayette wrote:

> Yes, I wish to expose the platform and possibly Browser theme specific icons to web content with the Icon URI scheme. The idea is to allow the Icon URI scheme to be used anywhere an image is specifiable by a data URI in HTML and JavaScript. This will allow web content to emulate the look and feel of the native Operating System and of the Browser itself in the case of themed icons. I believe this will benefit both content creators and consumers.

To gain an interoperability benefit, we would presumably need to define the set of icons available, right?

> 
> Chromium currently has an internal scheme (chrome://fileicon/<path>) that it is using for internal HTML pages and Mozilla's moz-icon scheme is already exposed to web content. I am not sure if other browsers have similar schemes for providing icon resources internally.
> 
> I am working on the Internet Draft for this and will be seeking feedback soon enough. If anyone has any thoughts on security issues, it would be most welcomed as a thorough security analysis is required for the draft.

I would recommend not using "//" in URLs of this scheme unless they have an authority component. It is better for them not to look like a hierarchical URI in that case.

Regards,
Maciej

> 
> Thanks.
> 
> 2010/1/26 Adam Barth <w3c@adambarth.com>
> On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 1:01 PM, Lachlan Hunt <lachlan.hunt@lachy.id.au> wrote:
> > Pierre-Antoine LaFayette wrote:
> >>
> >> So in HTML a user can have:
> >>
> >> <img src="moz-icon://unknown?size=16" alt="File:"/>
> >>
> >> If opened in Firefox, the browser will provide an icon for the filetype. I
> >> think this is a useful scheme that other browsers could benefit from.
> >> There
> >> is a chrome://fileicon/<path>  scheme in Chromium, however it is purely
> >> internal and not exposed to the Web. I thought that having a standard
> >> icon:// scheme of some sort would be the best approach rather than
> >> Chromium
> >> and Mozilla having their own browser specific schemes for icon retrieval.
> >
> > What benefit is there for trying to achieve interoperability by
> > standardising this?  Are these icons meant to be used by web content, or
> > meant only for internal use by the browser?
> 
> I think Pierre-Antoine would like to expose this to web content.
> 
> Adam
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Pierre.