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I am not sure if many of you have noticed it yet but facebook is popping up a dialog box in bottom right of the screen (Near chat list) which asks you to start facebook messenger if it's installed on your system but not running right now. If you click on it, the messenger starts. I want to know how can a script on facebook access our file system to start the messenger process? For the detection process, we have assumed that it must be tracking it via cookies but not sure of it too.

Operating system : Microsoft Windows 7 Browser : Mozilla Firefox 14

Akshat Goel
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The script is not accessing your file system. Instead it is accessing a URL with a unique protocol, and if it is recognised, the prompt appears.

For example, on the iTunes Preview, the View in iTunes links begin with itms://

If itms:// is recognised by your computer (or web browser) a prompt appears in your web browser (most likely Firefox) asking you if you want to open the site in iTunes.

What you have to do is make up your own protocol for your computer program, like skype:// has one.

desbest
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  • just like your username, you are the best!! =) thanks man! I totally forgot the skype. Where can I learn this stuff? What are the keywords to search? Any idea? This sounds cool :) – Akshat Goel Sep 22 '12 at 14:37
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    http://stackoverflow.com/questions/389204/how-do-i-create-my-own-url-protocol-e-g-so http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4638/how-do-you-create-your-own-moniker-url-protocol-on-windows-systems http://blogs.msdn.com/b/noahc/archive/2006/10/19/register-a-custom-url-protocol-handler.aspx – desbest Sep 22 '12 at 14:40