18219 - "manual" helper apps as user-chosen alternatives

Status: NEW

(SeaMonkey :: Download & File Handling, enhancement)

Description

[Sean Richardson]

{Split off new proposal from bug 8589 - see there for reasons for allowing
access to arbitrary helper apps from Mozilla as a useful convenience to users
in place of saving the file currently displayed first}

It needn't be hard to provide a mechanism for "advanced" users to hook in
arbritrary helper apps for any purpose, as many as may be desirable,
without impacting "basic" users at all.

There is a simple and completely general way that this could be done: allow
the dialog for [New] apps defined in the Applications pane of the Prefs UI
to record whether a given helper is "Auto" or "Manual" (a simple flag).
A manual app would normally be set up for a mime type that already
has an auto app (usually internal) defined, and would be used only as a
user-chosen alternate.

Auto apps would be invoked by default triggered by mime type as now,
whereas manual apps would be added to a "Helpers ->" or "Applications ->"
submenu or possibly an "Applications" menu as prefs.js or the registry
(wherever the rest of the Applications are stored) is read in at startup.

The user could then invoke on the current file whatever helper app is useful
in a specific circumstance with just a few keystrokes or mousing actions - and
invoke a different one five minutes later for another reason.

This ought to be straightforward to implement, and it would provide a clean
mechanism not only for bringing up a webpage in an editor (or one of two or
more) of the user's choice directly from Mozilla, but also for beta-testing
new applications to be part of Mozilla (or major enhancements to applications)
*in any release version of the browser* (say, testing an overhauled messenger
without disabling the current one being used as a main e-mail MUA) (subject to
API stability, but an app that is a candidate for inclusion in the next
release version could test for crucial API prerequisites and fail cleanly).

Comment 1

[leger]

Setting QA Contact and component.  don to assign.

Comment 2

[Paul MacQuiddy]

updating qa contact

Comment 3

[don]

Move to "Future" milestone.

Comment 4

[James Salsman]

Sharing this with my freinds.  My guess is that this is 
a duplicate, but I don't know what of.  Maybe Scott does.

Comment 5

[Viswanath Ramachandran]

Since Don has left, Vishy is taking his bugs in bulk, pending reassignment.
thanks,
	Vishy

Comment 6

[James Salsman]

I no longer think this one is a duplicate.  I do think it is
a very good idea, but I'm not sure if the original description 
has the best solution.

How about this:  a new link pop-up menu option, right below 
"Save Link As...", something like "Send To Application..." 
which would pop up the same "Pick App..." / "[Configure] 
External Viewer" browse box that you get with new unregistered 
MIME types.  I think that would also be much easier, both for 
the programmer and the end user.

Sean, would that satisfy you?

Comment 7

[Paul Chen]

nav triage team:

Would be nice, but don't think we'll get to this in beta1, marking nsbeta1-

Comment 8

[Blake Ross]

-> law

Comment 9

[James Salsman]

Memorializing the pertinent documentation, the result of closed bug 61408:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=112432&action=view

Comment 10

[James Salsman]

This is not a duplicate of closed bug 57423. 

This needs to be done after input helper applications as they will change the semantics 
of the helper application RDF structure (very slightly, I hope.)

Comment 11

[Robert Kaiser]

This bug report is registered in the SeaMonkey product, but has been without a comment since the inception of the SeaMonkey project. This means that it was logged against the old Mozilla suite and we cannot determine that it's still valid for the current SeaMonkey suite. Because of this, we are setting it to an UNCONFIRMED state.

If you can confirm that this report still applies to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it back to the NEW state along with a comment on how you reproduced it on what Build ID, or if it's an enhancement request, why it's still worth implementing and in what way.
If you can confirm that the report doesn't apply to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it to the appropriate RESOLVED state (WORKSFORME, INVALID, WONTFIX, or similar).
If no action happens within the next few months, we move this bug report to an EXPIRED state.

Query tag for this change: mass-UNCONFIRM-20090614

Comment 12

[Robert Kaiser]

This bug report is registered in the SeaMonkey product, but has been without a comment since the inception of the SeaMonkey project. This means that it was logged against the old Mozilla suite and we cannot determine that it's still valid for the current SeaMonkey suite. Because of this, we are setting it to an UNCONFIRMED state.

If you can confirm that this report still applies to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it back to the NEW state along with a comment on how you reproduced it on what Build ID, or if it's an enhancement request, why it's still worth implementing and in what way.
If you can confirm that the report doesn't apply to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it to the appropriate RESOLVED state (WORKSFORME, INVALID, WONTFIX, or similar).
If no action happens within the next few months, we move this bug report to an EXPIRED state.

Query tag for this change: mass-UNCONFIRM-20090614

Comment 13

[Robert Kaiser]

This bug report is registered in the SeaMonkey product, but has been without a comment since the inception of the SeaMonkey project. This means that it was logged against the old Mozilla suite and we cannot determine that it's still valid for the current SeaMonkey suite. Because of this, we are setting it to an UNCONFIRMED state.

If you can confirm that this report still applies to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it back to the NEW state along with a comment on how you reproduced it on what Build ID, or if it's an enhancement request, why it's still worth implementing and in what way.
If you can confirm that the report doesn't apply to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it to the appropriate RESOLVED state (WORKSFORME, INVALID, WONTFIX, or similar).
If no action happens within the next few months, we move this bug report to an EXPIRED state.

Query tag for this change: mass-UNCONFIRM-20090614

Comment 14

[Robert Kaiser]

This bug report is registered in the SeaMonkey product, but has been without a comment since the inception of the SeaMonkey project. This means that it was logged against the old Mozilla suite and we cannot determine that it's still valid for the current SeaMonkey suite. Because of this, we are setting it to an UNCONFIRMED state.

If you can confirm that this report still applies to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it back to the NEW state along with a comment on how you reproduced it on what Build ID, or if it's an enhancement request, why it's still worth implementing and in what way.
If you can confirm that the report doesn't apply to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it to the appropriate RESOLVED state (WORKSFORME, INVALID, WONTFIX, or similar).
If no action happens within the next few months, we move this bug report to an EXPIRED state.

Query tag for this change: mass-UNCONFIRM-20090614

Comment 15

[Robert Kaiser]

This bug report is registered in the SeaMonkey product, but has been without a comment since the inception of the SeaMonkey project. This means that it was logged against the old Mozilla suite and we cannot determine that it's still valid for the current SeaMonkey suite. Because of this, we are setting it to an UNCONFIRMED state.

If you can confirm that this report still applies to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it back to the NEW state along with a comment on how you reproduced it on what Build ID, or if it's an enhancement request, why it's still worth implementing and in what way.
If you can confirm that the report doesn't apply to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it to the appropriate RESOLVED state (WORKSFORME, INVALID, WONTFIX, or similar).
If no action happens within the next few months, we move this bug report to an EXPIRED state.

Query tag for this change: mass-UNCONFIRM-20090614

Comment 16

[Robert Kaiser]

This bug report is registered in the SeaMonkey product, but has been without a comment since the inception of the SeaMonkey project. This means that it was logged against the old Mozilla suite and we cannot determine that it's still valid for the current SeaMonkey suite. Because of this, we are setting it to an UNCONFIRMED state.

If you can confirm that this report still applies to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it back to the NEW state along with a comment on how you reproduced it on what Build ID, or if it's an enhancement request, why it's still worth implementing and in what way.
If you can confirm that the report doesn't apply to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it to the appropriate RESOLVED state (WORKSFORME, INVALID, WONTFIX, or similar).
If no action happens within the next few months, we move this bug report to an EXPIRED state.

Query tag for this change: mass-UNCONFIRM-20090614

Comment 17

[Robert Kaiser]

This bug report is registered in the SeaMonkey product, but has been without a comment since the inception of the SeaMonkey project. This means that it was logged against the old Mozilla suite and we cannot determine that it's still valid for the current SeaMonkey suite. Because of this, we are setting it to an UNCONFIRMED state.

If you can confirm that this report still applies to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it back to the NEW state along with a comment on how you reproduced it on what Build ID, or if it's an enhancement request, why it's still worth implementing and in what way.
If you can confirm that the report doesn't apply to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it to the appropriate RESOLVED state (WORKSFORME, INVALID, WONTFIX, or similar).
If no action happens within the next few months, we move this bug report to an EXPIRED state.

Query tag for this change: mass-UNCONFIRM-20090614

Comment 18

[Robert Kaiser]

MASS-CHANGE:
This bug report is registered in the SeaMonkey product, but still has no comment since the inception of the SeaMonkey project 5 years ago.

Because of this, we're resolving the bug as EXPIRED.

If you still can reproduce the bug on SeaMonkey 2 or otherwise think it's still valid, please REOPEN it and if it is a platform or toolkit issue, move it to the according component.

Query tag for this change: EXPIRED-20100420

Comment 20

[Karsten Düsterloh]

Valid enhancement request.