aim:goim? ~~~ How does this work?

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hawleyjr
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aim:goim? ~~~ How does this work?

Post by hawleyjr »

Throughout the post there are links to IM people. (AOL, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ) The MSN link gives the username, the yahoo opens an applet to chat but the aol uses the following link which opens AIM

Code: Select all

aim:goim?screenname=aimusername&message=Hello+Are+you+there?
At first glance this appears to be analogous to the mailto:email@test.com

How is this done? Is this something Aol installs when you install AIM? How is it even possible that aol is doing something smarter then others....? (Sorry had to insert the AOL slam)

Anyway, just curious....
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tim
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Post by tim »

Roja
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Re: aim:goim? ~~~ How does this work?

Post by Roja »

hawleyjr wrote:At first glance this appears to be analogous to the mailto:email@test.com

How is this done?
Its called a "Protocol Handler", and yes, AOL, and AOL-IM installs a new protocol handler. Basically, when you click on a protocol link (xxxx:) windows looks for a program that has volunteered to handle that link.

There are:

telnet://
gopher://
ftp://
http://
https://

and the list goes on.

It is fairly slick, and you can in fact create your own (wicked:// ?).

However, you need to have a protocol handler for that protocol, and that can be fairly non-trivial to code on windows.
malcolmboston
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Post by malcolmboston »

something i found at last night

for windows users:

outlook://
is a valid protocol handler if you have outlook express installed
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