Picasa:// links in Google Chrome (Linux)

Question

When I go to Picasa Web to see another user's album, I can download pictures using Picasa with it. This launched a URL like

picasa://downloadfeed/?url=http%3A...

In Firefox, when I click this, I can choose to open it with /usr/bin/picasa and it works fine.

In Chrome however, it doesn't suggest to choose an application to open it, but sends it to xdg-open instead, which fails. When I try to launch such a URL with xdg-open in a console, I get :

$ xdg-open picasa://foobar
   kio (KRun): ERROR: #### NO SUPPORT FOR READING!

I've found a post on a forum that says that you can configure xdg-open associations in ~/.local/share/applications/defaults.list :

$ cat ~/.local/share/applications/defaults.list
   [Default Applications]
   text/html=google-chrome.desktop

but I have no idea what to use for Picasa links. Furthermore, man xdg-open indicates that

xdg-open supports file, ftp, http and https URLs.

I've also tried editing the file associations in KDE's System Settings to add a "picasa" entry in the "uri" group. I logged out and in again (just in case), but it still won't work.

Does anybody know how I can get Google Chrome to manage these URLs properly?

Answer 1

On KDE4, you can add a protocol handler under $HOME/.kde4/share/kde4/services/. On Earlier versions I believe this directory is $KDEDIR/share/services/. Create a file called picasa.protocol and place this in it:

[Protocol]
exec=/usr/bin/picasa "%u"
protocol=picasa
input=none
output=none
helper=true
listing=false
reading=false
writing=false
makedir=false
deleting=false

You may need to tweak the options a bit, but I think that should work. This is the same method for setting up the spotify handler in chrome, as well as a handler for last.fm.

Answer 2

Solved. Works for Ubuntu 11, all browsers, gnome3 / Unity.

Find the following file and edit by hand. I did not find the correct way to do this with gconf-editor.

File name and path:

~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list

1. Make a copy of the file in case you need to replace it.

2. Add the following line at the end of [Added Associations]:

   x-scheme-handler/picasa=picasa.desktop
   

3. Save the file

Go back to your web browser and attempt to download the album to Picasa again. This worked for me.

Sample script:

cd ~/.local/share/applications
cp mimeapps.list mimeapps.list.old
nano mimeapps

Once inside nano, add the line above at step 2; Ctrl + O then Ctrl + X.

Answer 3

Try this, replacing "bitcoin" with "picasa" in this case (source):

How to configure your browser

Firefox (version 3.5 and above)

Visit about:config

1. Create a new boolean (mouse right click -> new -> boolean)
2. Enter this name: network.protocol-handler.expose.bitcoin
3. Select the value: false
4. Next time you click on a Bitcoin URI, a dialog will ask you to enter the path of your Bitcoin client. Make sure it is executable

Chrome:

To configure Chrome on Ubuntu 10.04 or maybe later versions to handle bitcoin URIs, do this first on the command-line:

1. $ gconftool-2 -t string -s /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/bitcoin/command "/path/to/electrum.py %s"
2. $ gconftool-2 -t bool -s /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/bitcoin/needs_terminal false
3. $ gconftool-2 -t bool -s /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/bitcoin/enabled true

This tells Gnome what to do with bitcoin URLs, and Chrome picks that up from Gnome.

Answer 4

Can you go into Firefox and under the Applications tab, find the entry for the Picasa link, and then copy it into Chrome? That seems the best way to do it to me...