[vlc-devel] Re: Status of firefox and/or activeX plugins

[Michael Dale]

Derk-Jan Hartman wrote:
> On 21-sep-2006, at 13:03, Jonas A. Larsen wrote:
>> I’ve been wondering lately, since we support just about all videos
>> formats at this point. Why is it that the vlc plugins still cant
>> replace the quicktime/wmpt etc browser plugins? I mean if we can play
>> the same fileformats why is it you cant use vlc plugins for sites
>> like break.com, youtube etc?
>>
>> Surely it cant be much that would have to be changed for vlc’s
>> plugins to be able to interpret the html code?Or am I
>> missunderstadning something completely?
>
> There are several problems:
>
> 1: Flash support is still quite weak. I just read a new fix has been
> added to ffmpeg to better read flash on youtube servers. Hopefully it
> will help.
> 2: HTTP hosting != media hosting even though some ppl seem to think
> otherwise. The problem with hosting a file on a simple web server is
> that seeking requires a lot of connect/disconnects. Therefore some of
> this functionality (avi) is disabled in VLC to protect the servers
> from going haywire.
> 3: Prioritizing and mime-type registration management in web plugins
> is an absolute disaster. The ppl at Netscape who thought up this in
> the 90s were clearly not looking ahead far enough. A plugin always
> needs to explicitly support a mime-type. And if multiple plugins
> support the same mime-type it's almost impossible to predict which
> plugin will take precedence.
> 4: VLC does not have native interface elements for the plugins yet.
> These need to be built separately for each platform.
> 5: Controlling and javascript steering of the various modules out
> there is a complicated and for some parts undocumented process.
>
> There are some other issues of course.
> Basically if more people work with Damien (Quovodis) on these issues,
> many should be solved fairly soon now. VLCs embedded plugins are
> improving rapidly mostly thanks to Damien, but there is still a lot of
> work left to be done.
>
> DJ
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>
I am also pushing for plugin development...
I made a simple spec for an ideal feature set:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Firefox_Ogg_Support
made a working demo of the embed controls using javascript:
http://metavid.ucsc.edu/bleeding_edge/test3.html
and I have downloaded the vlc source code and hopefully I will have some
time to get familiar with the code base and contribute in that area.
I have also been trying to push the firefox developers to move forward
on native ogg support in firefox.
http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.platform/browse_thread/thread/e56c81f0d078e268/47f7f7ffc5bfc9bc

We should have a better open video support in web browsers soon :)

--Michael



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