Firefox Share
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Firefox Share was a browser toolbar button (in Firefox 23-56) to share the current page to a share provider of the user’s choice. It was removed in Firefox version 57 [1] in favor of WebExtensions.
It is possible to perform any other action (reply, like, repost…) with the page, but the button is labelled "Share," and most providers implement sharing.
The "Share" toolbar button is represented as a paper airplane icon.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Projects/Social_API/Guide/Share
Clicking the button gives you an option of sharing the current page to whatever share providers you have installed. If you don't have any installed, it has a link to the Activations Directory where you can install share providers for various services, including:
- Known - a share service that lets you use any Known installation, on withknown.com, or your own server.
Why
By setting up a Firefox share social provider for your site, you can then post a page directly from the Firefox toolbar to your site.
Under the hood
The Share button is part of the Social API.
API example:
Social API Documentation:
IndieWeb Examples
Ben Werdmüller uses the Known share provider to share from Firefox to his site werd.io.- unrelentingtech used the Micropublish share provider, added with FoxShare, to share from Firefox to their site unrelenting.technology.
Share providers that use indieweb building blocks (e.g. Micropub) and/or support posting to indieweb friendly tools.
- Known share provider (needs link)
- FoxShare
Additional Open Source Examples
Diaspora
There's a share provider for Diaspora on staging:
Since its UI requires the user to choose a pod or personal Diaspora instance to proceed, it could be used as inspiration for a Micropub share provider as well.
Brainstorming
It would be great to have a Firefox share provider in the Activations Directory that works with any micropub supporting IndieWeb site. It could work something like this:
From your own site:
- User navigates to the "Install Micropub Share Provider Page" on their own website
- See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Projects/Social_API/Manifest for a sample HTML page that provides a button to install a share provider
- User clicks the "Activate Micropub Share Provider" button
- Page posts a "ActivateSocialFeature" event with the JSON data of the share manifest
- Firefox provides a dropdown asking the user if they want to activate it "Would you like to enable services from ..." with a button (Enable Services)
- User clicks (Enable Services) - Firefox installs that share manifest
That's it. Now clicking the share (airplane) icon will drop down a UI rendered by your website from the "shareURL" property in the share manifest with the following %{url}, %{text}, etc. properties as documented in https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Projects/Social_API/Share#Share_URL_Template
- url, medium, source, sitename, title, description, text, image
Equivalent to microformats properties:
- u-url, ??? type on a href, og:type ???, u-video | u-audio, ???, p-name, p-summary | p-description, p-content, u-photo
Once activated from the toolbar:
- The shareURL that the user's site renders provides a sign-in UI (assuming they're not already signed-in)
- The user signs-in with IndieAuth as they would on their own homepage
- The shareURL provides a UI for posting the information from the page to the user's website, using GET query params for the information from the site as documented above as the shareURL.
OR - from the Mozilla Activations Directory
- User installs "Micropub" share provider from Activations Directory
- Choosing the "Micropub" share provider drops down a UI page from a micropub sign-in proxy (maybe at indiewebcamp.com) with a URL field for the user to enter their own site
- The micropub share provider does micropub discovery on the user's site
- Then same steps above as "Once activated from the toolbar"
Micropub Next Steps
- Get one indieweb site working with its own activation UI/page
- Get a second indieweb site working with its own activation UI/page
- Figure out how to build a micropub proxy activation UI/page that can forward onto either of those first two indieweb sites, by them just entering their site URL, and following micropub/indieauth sign-in
- Have the micropub proxy remember (with a cookie) what was the user's personal site URL, and either present a simple sign-in button where it uses the site they used before, or a text field to enter another site.
- Get that micropub proxy activation UI/page included in the Firefox Activations Directory
After that any Firefox user should be able to install that micropub proxy activation provider, enter the micropub-supporting indieweb site URL, and use Firefox Share to post to their own website via micropub.
Activations Directory
Sample templates from the Activations Directory: