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October 7, 2011

Open Webcal Links Using Google Calendar in Chrome

If you visit Google Calendar using Chrome, you'll probably notice an infobar that asks you to "allow Google Calendar to open all web calendar links". Chrome has recently added support for protocol handlers, so that you can associate Gmail with mailto: links and Google Calendar with webcal: links. The infobar from Google Calendar requests your permission to associate the webcal: protocol with the application.


According to Wikipedia, "Webcal is an unofficial Uniform Resource Identifier scheme for accessing iCalendar files. Webcal was initiated for use with the Apple iCal application and has become a common de facto standard for accessing iCalendar formatted files via WebDAV. It is not an official URI scheme, such as http and ftp, as registered with IANA. The Webcal protocol prefix is used to trigger an external protocol handler which is passed the URL of the .ics file rather than being passed the downloaded contents of the file, in much the same way feed is sometimes used to trigger external RSS readers. The idea is that with this protocol prefix the target file should be subscribed to rather than imported into the calendar application as would happen with a simple download."

Here's an example of webcal: link that lets you subscribe to a calendar that includes the US holidays. You can find more calendars at iCalWorld and iCalShare.

To edit the protocol handlers in Google Chrome, open a new tab and paste in the address bar: chrome://settings/handlers (you can also go to Settings, click "Show advanced settings" at the bottom of the page, click "Content settings", then "Manage handlers").


Firefox also has this feature and it's even more powerful because it also works for filetypes. Unfortunately, you can only associate them with native apps, not with Web apps.

{ Thanks, Sterling. }

7 comments:

  1. "Unfortunately, you can only associate them with native apps, not with Web apps."
    https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/Window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler
    https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/window.navigator.registerContentHandler

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  2. Please explain how to do it in Gmail, it is not prompting me.

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  3. @jakub300:

    The link regarding protocols is not necessary, since the quote referred to filetypes. Firefox doesn't allow websites to handle arbitrary filetypes: the API is only for feeds.

    "For Firefox 2 and above, only the application/vnd.mozilla.maybe.feed, application/atom+xml, and application/rss+xml MIME types are supported. All values have the same effect, and the registered handler will receive feeds in all Atom and RSS versions."

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  4. :( shame, thought this might fix the problem Google Calendar has with loading event times for some calendars eg.
    webcal://calendars.uefa.com/files/ucl-en.ics

    ReplyDelete
  5. so is the answer yes or no?

    allow?

    ReplyDelete
  6. yea, should i allow it or not??

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  7. Thanks for the post. You can now create your online calendar in minutes, without coding.
    Just point and click http://blog.caspio.com/web_apps/creating-calendars-in-caspio-bridge/

    ReplyDelete

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