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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-12T12:32:44+00:00

I want to access a desktop application and launch it on navigating to a

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I want to access a desktop application and launch it on navigating to a ‘http’ URL. How can i achieve this?

Here’s what i have found so far – iTunes (i want almost the same functionality with my application) registers a handler for ‘itms’ and does a javascript call to this ‘itms://’ URL when the http URL is invoked. I have tried this out and this works well (and is fairly straightforward).

I have also heard about IE MIME-Types. Do they work on a similar mechanism? Or are they different? What are the advantages or otherwise of going with this approach over the iTunes approach?

Are there any other ways of achieving what i want to?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Using a URI scheme just for that purpose is in conflict with the Web Architecture (see http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-webarch-20041215/#URI-scheme). And yes, this applies to Apple’s schemes (itms, ical…) too.

    The proper way to achieve that goal is to mint a media type, to serve content with that media type, and to register the application as handler for that type. An example for a specification where this was used is RFC 4709 (http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/rfc4709.html).

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