Re: making requests from firefox without creating windows

amb-Uxr6IM1mbv2TY6FTCsQk+9Bc4/[email protected] (Andrew M. Bishop):
| The problem is that when the user clicks on the link the browser will
| send a request to the server/proxy and will display whatever comes
| back (either as a new page or an error message).


Yes, and see below.

| If you are trying to make this general purpose then this won't work
| because you don't know that the browser will handle mailto URLs 


However, i did never see a browser who doesn't handle mailto, by now.
We have to assume the wwwoffle user is capable of configuring this feature
of a browser, of course.

| it does then you don't know that it will use an external command to do it.

You think of stuff like mozilla or firefox 'all-in-all' suite ?
But they are split into modules, and use to call the application 'externally' too.
(I don't know how it looks like in Windows, though)
Or else, can you give us an example where mailto is _not_ configurable to
call an external application, or not handled at all ?

| Any attempt to make something "slip-through" is not a robust way to
| add a new feature.

Yes, agreed.


| I think that Javascript is probably the only way to get the browser to
| do something that doesn't involve changing what is currently
| displayed.  The problem is that Javascript might be disabled or not
| supported.

Agreed, too. Even with NoScript it's too tedious to enable JS temporarily
for every site you wish to cache.

I think the 'download' feature is the most promising. 
It should be possible to confugure the download managr of every browser, 
either just by config options, or even by exchnanging the download binary by a symlink
'proxy' whcih would pass the request either to the downlaoder or to wwwoffle, 
which can be switched by desktop button or hotkey.
That would of course be specific for every browser, too.

If external download agent like wget is invoked, you can just configure
this to use wwwoffle as proxy.

It's again about setting up a switch, after all, which 'activates' background 
caching mode. But of course, smartest would be to have just a special key
or mouse click for background caching a link, and download working just normally.

   °
 /\/