{"id":1442,"date":"2012-10-19T03:57:19","date_gmt":"2012-10-18T19:57:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/?p=1442"},"modified":"2012-10-19T03:57:19","modified_gmt":"2012-10-18T19:57:19","slug":"making-the-skype-uri-scheme-work-on-ubuntudebian-for-firefoxchromium-etc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/2012\/10\/19\/making-the-skype-uri-scheme-work-on-ubuntudebian-for-firefoxchromium-etc\/","title":{"rendered":"Making the skype: URI scheme work on Ubuntu\/Debian for Firefox\/Chromium etc"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Firefox doesn&#8217;t know how to open this address, because the protocol (skype) isn&#8217;t associated with any program<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/skype_logo_TM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1447 alignleft\" title=\"Skype\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/skype_logo_TM.png\" alt=\"Skype\" width=\"130\" height=\"59\" \/><\/a>I added some <a href=\"http:\/\/www.skype.com\/intl\/en-us\/tell-a-friend\/get-a-skype-button\/\">skype buttons<\/a> to <a href=\"http:\/\/lolyco.com\/\">lolyco.com<\/a> recently and seemed to hit a brick wall. While there seemed to be plenty of others running up against the same problem, I couldn&#8217;t find a working solution. I didn&#8217;t even try some of the more complicated looking ones &#8211; something as basic as registering a handler for an <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/URI_scheme\">URI scheme<\/a> couldn&#8217;t possibly require compilation of code, could it? Ideally I&#8217;d like a solution that worked the same for all the browsers I have installed:<\/p>\n<p>I found the answer to the more generic problem of <a href=\"http:\/\/stackoverflow.com\/questions\/7464951\/how-to-make-org-protocol-work\">registering any scheme handler at stackoverflow<\/a>. The solution that works for me is to use the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freedesktop.org\/wiki\/\">FreeDesktop.org<\/a>&#8216;s database of handlers for <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Internet_media_type\">MIME types<\/a>. What&#8217;s nice about this solution is that all software on your desktop that works with this database automatically gains skype URI-handling ability.<\/p>\n<p>There are just two steps:<\/p>\n<p>Create a file called &#8216;skype.desktop&#8217; in ~\/.local\/share\/applications\/ that contains this:<\/p>\n<pre class=\"brush: bash; title: ; notranslate\" title=\"\">&#x5B;Desktop Entry]\r\nName=skype\r\nExec=skype %u\r\nType=Application\r\nTerminal=false\r\nCategories=System\r\nMimeType=x-scheme-handler\/skype<\/pre>\n<p>Next, run the application update-desktop-database on the folder containing the desktop entry files:<\/p>\n<pre class=\"brush: bash; title: ; notranslate\" title=\"\">update-desktop-database ~\/.local\/share\/applications\/<\/pre>\n<p>That&#8217;s it! As long as you have skype installed so that it can be run by typing &#8216;skype&#8217; at a command prompt, compatible browsers should JustWork\u2122 with (for example) the <a title=\"Call echo123 at Skype\" href=\"skype:echo123?call\">Skype Echo \/ Sound Test Service<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The man pages for update-desktop-database and the post from &#8216;Mark&#8217; at stackoverflow show semicolons after some lines in the desktop entry. I found adding a semicolon to the Exec= line will stop skype launching correctly. The skype application will launch, but I&#8217;m guessing the semicolon is passed to the application which then fails to see the &#8220;call&#8221; query part.<\/p>\n<p>Happy skyping!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Firefox doesn&#8217;t know how to open this address, because the protocol (skype) isn&#8217;t associated with any program I added some skype buttons to lolyco.com recently and seemed to hit a brick wall. While there seemed to be plenty of others running up against the same problem, I couldn&#8217;t find a working solution. I didn&#8217;t even [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,3,64],"tags":[37,109,93,105],"class_list":["post-1442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fixed","category-software","category-useful","tag-firefox","tag-fixed","tag-skype","tag-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1442"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1450,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1442\/revisions\/1450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}