A proposal for "displaying URLs"

[James Henstridge <james daa com au>]

Hello,

I had an idea for an addition to the gnome libraries.  I have noticed that
a few programs have integration with the web browser (eg web browser
applet, slashdot applet).  I was wondering, why not make a nice interface
for displaying information at a URL that is user configurable.

I coded up an implementation of this, that can be found at
ftp://ftp.daa.com.au/pub/james/gnome/gnome-url.tar.gz

Basically, there is a function gnome_url_show("url") that will spawn a
viewer for the url given.  The current implementation allows individual
users to specify which browser they want to use on a per protocol basis.
A nice capplet could be written to configure this.

There is also a GnomeHRef widget that allows embedding of URL's in simple
programs (it is a bit ugly, but with a redesign it could be quite useful).

I think this sort of interface would be useful for things like the above
mentioned applets.  It may also be useful in balsa, where URLs may be
embedded in a mail message.

For more information, see the README file included in the archive.

James.

--
Email: james@daa.com.au
WWW:   http://www.daa.com.au/~james/