[jean-]

> We always could do that with extensions

You couldn't, until Firefox 59. Before that, protocol handlers were not allowed to handle links to Dat/IPFS resources [0].

And while I agree with your comment regarding the chicken and egg problem, there are still some technical issues. As the shadowbanned sibling comment says, extensions don't have access to UDP/TCP sockets, meaning that you will need to run a gateway on your machine. See e.g. what dat-fox [1] does.

[0]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/ma...

[1]: https://github.com/sammacbeth/dat-fox

[mook]

> You couldn't, until Firefox 59. Before that, protocol handlers were not allowed to handle links to Dat/IPFS resources [0].

You could, kind of, before Firefox 57 (or at least, at some point). Implementing nsIProtocolHandler/nsIChannel/etc. correctly was difficult (and probably not from JavaScript), and distribution problems meant nobody did it.

[classichasclass]

No, not nobody. OverbiteFF was implemented in nearly exactly that fashion, and 100% JavaScript.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/overbiteff/

But, not possible anymore (without tricks).

[jean-]

True, I remember looking into that and it was all a bit of a mess.