Title: bitcoin:// Post by: Bruce Wagner on December 04, 2010, 06:15:23 AM Today over lunch, I was telling Ed about the idea of a bitcoin widget for donations and/or payments. This idea came to me:
What we need is a new standard type of URL or link... like: bitcoin://15kDhRAcpgsugmh6mQsTcCHdvbsuYncEEV (http://bitcoin://15kDhRAcpgsugmh6mQsTcCHdvbsuYncEEV) Whenever anyone clicks that link (or an image or button with that as the underlying link), the computer's default Bitcoin app would launch, with that address already in the Send TO field. Even the web-based MyBitcoin could be set as the default bitcoin app for that device. This way using bitcoin could become a one click thing. As easy as clicking on someone's email address to compose a new email to him. Title: Re: bitcoin:// Post by: FreeMoney on December 04, 2010, 06:20:00 AM There has been discussion about exactly that. I don't quite get it in light of this:
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1411.0 a chrome extension, it turns bitcoin addresses on the page into clickable links. The implementation isn't perfect yet, but it works. Title: Re: bitcoin:// Post by: BitLex on December 04, 2010, 06:21:39 AM and more discussion here
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1877.0 and here http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=55.0 Title: Re: bitcoin:// Post by: genjix on December 04, 2010, 06:46:40 AM How about using mimetypes and setting bitcoin as that default mimetype.
i.e download and open address.bitcoin which contains the string 15kDhRAcpgsugmh6mQsTcCHdvbsuYncEEV Would be a hell of a lot easier and very simple to implement. Title: Re: bitcoin:// Post by: MagicalTux on December 04, 2010, 07:24:21 AM the .bitcoin file could just contain the address in binary format, or could be formatted to also include informations about, for example, a transaction to be made :)
Title: Re: bitcoin:// Post by: Gavin Andresen on December 04, 2010, 04:25:02 PM I've been lobbying for the mimetype solution.
I did a little mockup a while ago of what happens if you click on a link and do NOT have bitcoin installed (which, in my opinion, is the most important case): http://skypaint.com/btcpay/mimepay.html (http://skypaint.com/btcpay/mimepay.html) Title: Re: bitcoin:// Post by: Bruce Wagner on December 04, 2010, 08:16:04 PM As I said on that other thread...
Questions. 1. Why not have both? The market will decide which one people choose to use most. One might be used more at first, then later as browsers are updated, site owners might later switch to the other. But.... Are they mutually exclusive?? 2. What's stopping us? Let's just implement them BOTH immediately. We obviously have the knowledge and expertise to get the job done. Let's just get the job done already. Title: Re: bitcoin:// Post by: jgarzik on December 04, 2010, 10:18:06 PM MIME type is clearly superior to "bitcoin://" type URL. Because after all, you might use http:// to download a .bitcoin file.
Title: Re: bitcoin:// Post by: Gavin Andresen on December 04, 2010, 11:10:01 PM 1. Why not have both? The market will decide which one people choose to use most. One might be used more at first, then later as browsers are updated, site owners might later switch to the other. But.... Are they mutually exclusive?? Nope, the hard parts aren't parsing the bitcoin: url string (or the file), and once parsed the same code could do the actual request. Quote 2. What's stopping us? Let's just implement them BOTH immediately. We obviously have the knowledge and expertise to get the job done. Let's just get the job done already. The hard part: what happens if I click on a pay-using-bitcoin link and I don't happen to have bitcoin running right now? The browser or OS runs bitcoin and hands it the payment request info. The bitcoin process checks to see if there is already another bitcoin process running. Nope. Ok, load the wallet. And then wait until we're caught up fetching the block chain that we missed while we weren't running. Gotta do that because some of the transactions in my wallet might have been spent (if you copied your wallet somewhere), or you might have received payments while bitcoin wasn't running. And so N minutes after clicking bitcoin is FINALLY ready to send payment. If N is greater than 1, then that really sucks! --------------- I like click-to-pay, and I want it to work; it would work well now for the "I'm running bitcoin and connected to the network 24/7" use case. But I don't think that will be the common use case (most people probably won't bother generating). So I think we've got to figure out some clever way of making click-to-pay quick-- maybe ask for payment permission and then have bitcoin chug away in the background, popup an alert if there's some problem paying, or just shut itself down after it's caught up with the block chain and has submitted the payment. Or, assuming you have enough coins in your wallet, maybe just throw the transaction onto the network and let peers tell you if you're accidentally double-spending (that makes me very nervous, though). Or... Title: Re: bitcoin:// Post by: genjix on December 05, 2010, 05:29:17 AM bitcoind should ideally run listening. Then the bitcoin gui is simply a thin client communicating using json to the daemon.
This way people can easily make custom clients IMO Title: Re: bitcoin:// Post by: MrFlibble on December 06, 2010, 11:01:58 PM I've been lobbying for the mimetype solution. +1 (populism != sanity) The bitcoin: URL scheme makes sense by analogy to mailto: but
Quote I did a little mockup [...] http://skypaint.com/btcpay/mimepay.html (http://skypaint.com/btcpay/mimepay.html) Cool! I have cooked up an email version,
Also may I suggest from my armchair,
HTH, Title: Re: bitcoin:// Post by: Bruce Wagner on December 07, 2010, 05:04:43 AM You guys are over my head... but rather than the Bitcoin program needing to be running 24/7..... What if the link opened the web-based MyBitcoin.com... inserting all the proper fields into a Send Money page....
Title: Re: bitcoin:// Post by: MrFlibble on December 08, 2010, 02:51:24 AM You guys are over my head... but rather than the Bitcoin program needing to be running 24/7..... If you're including me there, sorry. I can try another explanation or answer some questions? (But my IRL-lag may be high.) I don't think bitcoind needs to be running. The mimetype has an app to handle it, call it bitcoin_pay_gui (or plain bitcoin with some option flags). When this starts it needs to check for a running bitcoin(d) and talk to it, else start one or do the operation itself. To make the payment, ideally you have the latest block so you know your balance (yes?) but in cavalier mode you could issue the transaction on old money without checking you still own it. Then the app should probably hang around to see some confirmation, or failures, and notify the user. After this it can quit if nobody needs it. Quote What if the link opened the web-based MyBitcoin.com... inserting all the proper fields into a Send Money page.... Hmm, if the browser says it Accepts:application/bitcoin-payment-request then mybitcoin.com is irrelevant, but if it doesn't (very likely) then it's certainly worth putting a suitable link in the "page you get before it just gives you a file you can't yet deal with". I'm not sure this is what Accepts: was intended for... Presumably mybitcoin.com could usefully fetch & process this mimetype? This seems less useful than a multi-format spec of standard keys & values to send when requesting payment from someone..? Title: Re: bitcoin:// Post by: awwright on December 08, 2010, 05:53:47 AM Becides being discussed before, bitcoin: addresses musn't be using // in them because it's not a network location, the syntax is described in RFC 2396 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt)
Title: Re: bitcoin:// Post by: Cdecker on December 08, 2010, 03:25:52 PM That's why we need moderators. The discussion about a unified URI schema for bitcoin now is spread over 7+ threads and it's getting really hard to follow the overall discussion.
Please continue discussing the bitcoin URI scheme here: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=55 |