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firefox-addonskypebrowser-addons

How do skype extensions for browsers actually work?

We have plans of developing a web application that will have to communicate with our locally running application. One of the possible options is using browser extensions. I was looking into how Skype add-ons to browsers communicate with Skype client. In Firefox, Skype add-on inserts a piece of HTML when it encounters a phone number. Is this 

<span skypeaction="...">

processed by a Skype extension which makes a call using Skype API? Do extensions for other browsers use Skype API or other communications mechanism?

Solution

  • I did a bit of research and here's what I found. When the user clicks on the Skype link injected by the extension, the extension creates a new Skype process and passes it the parameters specifying the action and the number. Custom protocol handler is not used.