respond to system mailto: events?

[tomholub]

from user:

is there any way to set the 'default' new email (from say a "mailto:" link) to FlowCrypt instead of gmail's default new email template?

My thoughts: can an extension even be configured to be the default handler of these? If so, how?

[limonte]

It does seem like possible feature to implement with Navigator.registerProtocolHandler()

In Chrome I did a successfult test, but Firefox throws SecurityError: Navigator.registerProtocolHandler: Permission denied to add moz-extension... as a protocol handler and unfortunately I didn't manage to find anything that could help for Firefox.

Here's the result of a quick test in Chrome:

The only one detail I couldn't figure out for now is how to replace the ext id with "FlowCrypt"

That's pretty much it, the default handler for mailto: links is FlowCrypt now, the next step would be to implement the standalone version of compose.htm, something similar to https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=user@gmail.com

@tomholub let me know what do you think, would it make sence to go ahead with this if it's only supported by Chrome?

[limonte]

I made a quick demo: https://limonte.github.io/registerProtocolHandler-demo/

In Firefox it looks like this:

After clicking the "Add Application" button the service handler will be available in settings:

[tomholub]

Thanks! This looks nice, my one worry is about UX - at which point do we offer the user to set this up.

If we offer it during normal user workflow (in Secure Compose let's say), people may not be happy about it.

If it's just somewhere in the settings, very few people will do it.

I think it would be good to have an easily accessible way to edit composer settings. Accessible both as a settings icon in the compose window itself, and as a page in the flowcrypt settings. Once we have that, composer-related settings would go there and this could be one of them.

Another thing is, most users will probably want to be sending unencrypted emails most of the time. So even if they wanted to set this up at one point, next time they actually want to send a plain email, it may get in their way.

All together, I'm now less sure about implementing this.

[limonte]

I think it would be good to have an easily accessible way to edit composer settings. Accessible both as a settings icon in the compose window itself, and as a page in the flowcrypt settings. Once we have that, composer-related settings would go there and this could be one of them.

+1 for this. IMO handling mailto links should be opt-in, e.g. we should not ask about that, but create an intuitive way for users to set FlowCrypt as mailto handler and the composer settings would be a great place for that.

Another thing is, most users will probably want to be sending unencrypted emails most of the time. So even if they wanted to set this up at one point, next time they actually want to send a plain email, it may get in their way.

That's probably the correct assumption but as mentioned "for most users". There might be let's say 5% of users who are sending 51% or more encrypted emails and for those the feature will make sense and improve their UX.

All together, I'm now less sure about implementing this.

Let's maybe keep this task on hold for now and think about it in backgroud of our brains a little bit more. We can get back to it after adding the composer settings feature.

[tomholub]

Sounds good, I'm moving it to "discussion" and we may eventually reconsider once we have a better place to place this.

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