The VideoLAN Forums

I realize that there are certain to be platform-specific issues here, but...
Has anyone successfully compiled VLC as a Firefox xpi (extension) on *any* platform?
If so, how was it done, or more bluntly, can you post the source/instructions?
If not, is it on the horizon for anyone? What would it take to get this started as a sub-project?

there is already a mozilla plugin version of VLC which works with FireFox; so I don't see what advantages an xpi version would provide

As useful as the idea of a plugin is, it has the following disadvantages:
1) it requires a complete install of the app that users may or may not be allowed to carry out (especially Windows users on managed machines)
2) installation of an xpi plugin is just easier - especially if it was hosted by the mozilla extensions website, which will already be in the "Allowed Sites" pref applet
3) updates will be easier to distribute
4) making the FF plugin work is by no means a simple operation.

I've tried to get the shipped plugin to work on many platforms with numerous versions of both FF and VLC. Just dropping/linking some so/dll files into a plugins folder does not work. Now, I may be an idiot, but if I am I'll wager that I'm representative of a great number of people that cannot get the plugin to work reliably.

I guess I'd need some very clear instructions that work ALL of the time on ALL platforms that I can pass along to end users that do not want to install an/another application to do what they think WMP/iTunes/QuickTime/whatever should do already. And really, isn't adoption the idea?

A Mozilla-blessed version of any kind of VLC plugin is simply never going to happen. The Mozilla foundation has understandable quality control requirements that VLC will never meet given its size. Also VLC is not built to use the Mozilla framework, and it will never be since we still want to be able to use it as a stand-alone app or ActiveX plugin.