What I'm looking for is a simple FLOSS add-on for Firefox through which the address bar recognizes Fediverse-style account handles as such, i.e. it infers the URL that corresponds to that profile and opens it. (Or alternatively: It shows that handle on one specified instance, e.g. always from your Mastodon home instance.)

Inferring the URL is of course not entirely trivial, as it depends on what software runs on the instance; but perhaps someone has already put together a solution that works reasonably well... or you would like to make one yourself. Edit for clarification: Even coverage of only some ActivityPub implementations, such as recent versions of Mastodon and Lemmy, would be a great start if support for others can be added later on.

For people with experience developing Firefox add-ons, it would be great if you share insights about what functionalities one should use to execute the redirect.

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[–] JupiterRowland@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Realistically speaking, this could only work as another development that's built directly and only against Mastodon. Something that won't work anywhere else.

These URLs are different everywhere in the Fediverse, that's why. It'd be tedious to implement even only the most common Fediverse server applications, and it'd be even more tedious to implement them all.

For one, profile/account/channel URLs are different everywhere. Besides, the URL for someone else's profile/account/channel on your server is different everywhere yet again.

Here are a few out of many examples. Let's assume you're on foo.com, and you want to look at the profile of alice@bar.org.

Lemmy users

The local scheme is /u/

The remote scheme is /u/@

Lemmy communities

The local scheme is /c/

The remote scheme is /c/@

Mastodon up to 4.6, also Pixelfed, Pleroma, Akkoma and apparently also GoToSocial:

The local scheme is /users/

The alternative local scheme is /@

The remote scheme is /users/@

Mastodon from 4.7 on:

The local scheme is /ap/users/

The alternative local scheme is /@

The remote scheme is /ap/users/@

PeerTube accounts (there's no content to be found here):

The local scheme is /a/ or /accounts/

PeerTube channels (this is where the actual videos are):

The local scheme is /c/ or /video-channels/

*key:

The local scheme is /users/

The alternative local scheme is /@

WriteFreely:

The local scheme is /api/collections/

Friendica:

The local scheme is /profile/

Hubzilla:

The local scheme is /channel/

The remote scheme for the local "in-between page" is /chanview?f=&hash=<Full local account/channel URL of the remote account/channel>

The remote scheme for actually viewing the account/channel remotely, but using OpenWebAuth magic sign-on, is <Full local account/channel URL of the remote account/channel>?zid=@

This means that the remote URL on Hubzilla is different, depending on where the account/channel is. The remote scheme for a Hubzilla channel is different from the remote scheme for a Mastodon account, which is different from the remote scheme for a *key account, which is different from the remote scheme for a Lemmy community.

So if you want to use such an add-on, and you're on Hubzilla, then the add-on will have to know which Fediverse server application @user@domain.tld is on.

Oh, and if that wasn't bad enough: Not everything everywhere in the Fediverse uses @user@domain.tld. Some server applications use user@domain.tld. Friendica has done so since 2010, Hubzilla has since 2012, just to give you two examples.

So the add-on would have to cope with Fediverse handles with as well as without the leading @ and be able to tell whether that ID without the leading @ is an e-mail address, a Fediverse handle, an XMPP ID or something else again.

[–] libewa@feddit.org 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

How does Mastodon‘s „Open URL“ work then? It works with the URLs I get from Lemmy, so it does support some other software…

[–] JupiterRowland@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

Mastodon internally converts it into something it understands, maybe using Webfinger.

That'd be one reason why Webfinger, which is not part of the official W3C ActivityPub spec, is a hard requirement for federating with Mastodon.

The idea behind this Firefox add-on idea appears to be that it shall work with any Fediverse server application, regardless of which one you use. Or it should be if it has "Fediverse" in its description. You should be able to use it with Mastodon or with Lemmy, but you should be able to use it with Akkoma or Misskey or Iceshrimp.NET or Hollo or Mbin or Friendica or Hubzilla or (streams) or Wafrn all the same.

But it already gets tricky if it has to support Lemmy (as in being on Lemmy) in addition to Mastodon.

[–] waldfee@feddit.org 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

In case I'm missing something, is there a good reason to not use the webfinger? It would be a simple request to https:// domain.tld/.well-known/webfinger?resource=acct:user@domain.tld and you would get everything you're looking for