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

Pierre-Antoine LaFayette wrote:
> The actual use case that triggered my want to have this was the FTP and
> file:// URI directory listings pages in Chromium. They currently are quite
> bland and without icons, as may be true for other browsers. Opera doesn't
> have icons for files, i think Safari uses 2 stock icons for folders and
> files. Firefox' equivalent pages use the moz-icon scheme and have the
> platform specific icons. Makes for very nice directory listing pages.

OK, and I suppose the standard directory listing pages that Apache 
generates could also make use of them.  It wasn't clear from your 
original mail that this was just about file type icons, based on the 
file extension.  You also mentioned:

> <stock-image> is of the format:   stock/<icon-name>
> <icon-name> is a valid icon name, such as 'ok', 'cancel', 'yes', 'no'.

It's not clear what the use cases for these are, but for these, it does 
seem like we would need to define a common set of icons that are 
available, unlike the file type icons that can load the system's 
associated icon.

Have you considered using the existing about: URI scheme for this?  This 
scheme is in the process of being standardised, and it is possible for 
specs to define URIs using it, which are then meant for resolving in 
application/platform specific ways.

See the draft here.
http://github.com/josephholsten/about-uri-scheme/blob/master/draft-holsten-about-uri-scheme-03.txt
The important part is defined in section 5, which has significant 
amendments described here, which have yet to be integrated into the draft.
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Sep/0755.html
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Sep/0767.html

You could write a spec to define an about:icon URI to work like this 
like, e.g. "about:icon?html;32"  or "about:icon?ext=html&size=32" 
(though, I think being shorter and avoiding '&' is better, so authors 
don't have to bother escaping it in their HTML)

-- 
Lachlan Hunt - Opera Software
http://lachy.id.au/
http://www.opera.com/

Received on Wednesday, 27 January 2010 13:12:07 UTC