I'm looking for best way to initiate call from a web page, and am trying to choose between the callto: and the tel: URL protocol.
The link will be a normal telephone number, not a Skype account, and I'm trying to support as many platforms as possible, including Skype and other similar VOIP applications, as well as Smartphones like the iPhone.
Examples of such tags are welcome!
SIP is the most widely supported VoIP protocol. If you do a search for "SIP Provider" or look at the list of networks on SIP Broker you'll get an idea of its pervasiveness. Although in their wisdom Skype have chosen to restrict SIP access to their network.
The SIP standard actually defines URI's of the form sip:[email protected] or sips:[email protected]. If your browser plugin supported SIP URIs it would be a good start.
Hello,
a quick look on the uri scheme on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URI_scheme) shows that tel: and sip: are officials uri schemes, contrary to callto: wich is a non official scheme dedicated to skype. I will then advise to use tel: or sip:. Be wise when using this because browsers can have unpredictable behavior, IE 6 for example try to follow the link and open a blank errorneous page.