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Comment by EMM_386 | Hacker News Reader

I'm actually ok with this, and I don't use Edge.

This is only for links using the microsoft-edge protocol, which is used by internal things like whatever this "News and Interests" widget is they have on the taskbar now. Regular web links will open in your default browser, Firefox or otherwise.

I'm ok with that. I doubt Microsoft wants support calls about how someone clicked on their widget and the resulting page didn't render properly because user was on X browser. As long as this is redirection for built-in OS things only, I'll give them a pass.

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So, if you want to override the users choice of browser, it's acceptable if you first replace "https://" with "microsoft-edge://" ? They're doing the exact same behavior, just with two steps instead of one.

I mean if I specified "firefox://" should that be overwritten too?

Yeah? Isn't the part before the colon just specifying the protocol? So shouldn't the software that I direct to open URLs be the software that...opens URLs?

I'm in no way defending what Microsoft is doing here, but I would like to be able to have different clients for http:// & ftp://. Segregating client software by protocol makes perfect sense

Completely agreed, and this is why conflating protocols and programs is really obnoxious. This seems really common in proprietary software, where the conflation is deliberate, no protocol spec is defined, and the implication is that no other programs can interact with the protocol. (E.g. "zoommtg://" referring both to a software client and to a protocol.)

This is what you get when OSs allow protocol handlers but not URL handlers. It would be totally fine if you could install Zoom and then zoom.us links would open Zoom but this is what we get on the desktop.

A protocol shouldn't be specifying the client software in the first place. That's sort of the entire point of a protocol, that it can be implemented in multiple different clients.

So to answer your question, yes. If a program is specifying "firefox://" and using it to mean "https://", then that should be considered a bug in the program specifying it. That bug can either be fixed in the program itself, or can have a workaround in an external program.

I guess I'm somewhat OK with protecting microsoft-edge:// links, maybe an argument for security could be made for application-specific protocols. But they absolutely should not use https:// for links that just open Bing and MSN. After all, those are just normal websites and work perfectly fine in Firefox, and of course in Chrome or Opera as well.

microsoft-edge links are just https links Microsoft wants to open in Edge.

> microsoft-edge links are just https links Microsoft wants to open in Edge.

or... user wants to open in Edge.

the user didn't write the link

They could, though. win+r `microsoft-edge://` should open Edge.

it does work that way on Windows 10

Any protocol should open the app the user chose. And msedge.exe works in your case.

My point is that applications themselves overriding URI protocols (that already have an app set) is an anti-pattern; in my opinion, MacOS' "Use Chrome/Keep Safari" prompt is the best way to handle this, as it allows the browser to prompt for change while ultimately letting the user choose. This would help in general, even for other protocols like https or mailto.

Microsoft overrode users' choices. Not anyone else.

EdgeDeflector just changed microsoft-edge links to https links so they would open in the browser the user chose. Users had to choose to install it.

Firefox and Brave just added microsoft-edge to the protocols they supported. Users had to choose to make 1 of them the default browser.

Why would you be ok with this? There is no conceivable reason for below-average web browsers to be propped up by polluting and bastardizing URLs like this.

Imagine if Apple tried this. People would riot.

I mean, at least on iOS Apple did something way more drastic.

Anyway, I feel like the bigger problem is that Microsoft does not use https to open some simple websites. And people, including me, are upset about it. If they just used https instead of microsoft-edge, we wouldn't have any of those problems and everybody would be happy (probably excluding a hand full of people at MS). They could still use their own protocol to open some Edge-specific setting page or whatever.

If Spotlight on macOS can use your configured default browser, so can Windows. I’m tired of Microsoft’s bullshit excuses.

> I doubt Microsoft wants support calls about how someone clicked on their widget and the resulting page didn't render properly because user was on X browser.

It's not "X browser", it would be just Firefox with its workaround. And it's common practice to design websites with support for major browsers, so it shouldn't be such a huge burden letting users pick a browser.

> As long as this is redirection for built-in OS things only, I'll give them a pass.

I won't as long as the built in OS things can't be replaced easily.

Yeah but this story is about them making a change that blocks EdgeDeflector a tool that only exists for specifically those users that want to go far out of their way to override this behavior, so it's not like it's going to innocently snare someone who didn't ask for it.

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