[vlc-devel] Gui for Mozilla's plugins

[jpd at videolan.org]

On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 02:04:36PM +0200, Alexandre Millet wrote:
> - The GUI can also be made in XUL, the downside in that it won't work
> on other browsers that support the NSPlugin API (opera, webkit, ...).

At least mixing XUL/XPCOM and NPAPI appears to be on the roll for
removal in ``firefox 3.6'', so that is pretty much dead in the water.

Another idea could be to come up with a custom CHROME component (a
``browser extension'', meaning javascript, rather than mozilla's idea of
C++ and thus neither XPCOM nor NPAPI). But of course that is also highly
mozilla specific and will require maintenance as it offers nothing but a
moving target. It itself would only use the js scripting api, however.


> - The fourth solution would be to integrate the GUI into the VLC core
> and inject the user interface directly into the VLC vout.

I have a hard time imagining this as a good idea.


> - The last solution would be to use native code. This implies that the
> GUI must be developped one time for each platform and is a pain to
> maintain.

You wouldn't be the first to try (as jpsaman noted) but as it's x11 only
and doesn't work fully as it should, it isn't finished. I'd say that is
an opportunity to get started.

You also should look at how revolunet provides a UI type thing on top of
the browser plugin. See http://vlc.revolunet.com/