Using mozilla plugin with other browsers (opera)

[nielm]

Is the mozilla plugin meant to be useable with other browsers?

I have tried it in Opera, and it plays back video and audio if the url is passed in the <embed> element, and AutoStart is enabled, so the plugin is obviously installed, but the problem is that none of the controls actually work -- a button such as:

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<input type="button" value="Play" onclick="document.video1.play();" />

gives the following JS errors:

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Event thread: click Error: name: TypeError message: Statement on line 1: Type mismatch (usually a non-object value used where an object is required) Backtrace: Line 1 of script document.video1.play(); At unknown location [statement source code not available]

I have also tried using getElementById("video1") to retrieve the VLC plugin object, and this returns an HTMLEmbedElement, but still the calling any action on this object fails. with the same error.

Any suggestions (apart from Use Firefox! )[/code]

[dionoea]

could you paste the HTML code you're using ?

[nielm]

Thanks for the quick response...

I am using your own test page
http://vthr.videolan.org/~dionoea/april/
with 2 minor modifications - specifying a different target file -- which exists and is played by FireFox, and adding the alternative action using getElementById("video1"):

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<input type="button" value="Play2" onclick="document.getElementById('video1').play();" />

(tested with Opera 8.01 and VLC 0.8.1 and 0.8.2-test3 on Windows )

[dionoea]

did you add an id ? (because the embed tag only has a name attribute in my page ...)

[nielm]

did you add an id ? (because the embed tag only has a name attribute in my page ...)

it does not make any difference if I do, and I don't think I need to:

document.video1 is a valid object in Opera (if I use a different name, I get a different error message: "Statement on line 1: Could not convert undefined or null to object", similarly if I use a different value in getElementById().

It seems that Opera does not recognise that the embedded object has the extra JS functions provided by the Plugin.

Some more searching found this opera forums post stating that Opera only supports the Netscape 4 plugin API, (and apparatly Mozilla have a newer API) Does that help in any way in diagnosing the problem

Thanks,
Niel

[jbellies]

Using vlc 0.8.2 plugin and the latest Opera 8.0.1, I found that yes, I could play a song from
http://www.tamblyn.com/albums.htm

However, there were drawbacks:
1. There were no controls, no window which the song belonged to. So, for example there was no possibility to pause, change the volume, or save the file.
2. The tab for the page was no longer accessible. Pressing the icon on the page bar would have no effect.
3. Because of 2., I could only play one song. Even after the song was finished, the page was inaccessible.
4. There was a considerable delay while the song was being queued up. I do no know for sure, but it seemed that the song did not start to play until it had been entirely cached.

So, I changed the > Preferences > Advanced > Download to save MP3 files and that worked fine. Saving Preferences has unwanted side-effects in Opera 8.0.1, but that is for another forum.

--
Jonathan Berry

[chaimav]

did you add an id ? (because the embed tag only has a name attribute in my page ...)

it does not make any difference if I do, and I don't think I need to:

document.video1 is a valid object in Opera (if I use a different name, I get a different error message: "Statement on line 1: Could not convert undefined or null to object", similarly if I use a different value in getElementById().

It seems that Opera does not recognise that the embedded object has the extra JS functions provided by the Plugin.

Some more searching found this opera forums post stating that Opera only supports the Netscape 4 plugin API, (and apparatly Mozilla have a newer API) Does that help in any way in diagnosing the problem

Thanks,
Niel

From the changelog of Opera 9.0 technology preview 1

Added Netscape Plug-in API extensions developed by browser and plug-in vendors.

I hope this helps as VLC and Opera are my 2 favorite softwares and I would love to see them work together.

Here is a thread I started about integrating VLC into Opera http://my.opera.com/community/forums/to ... ?id=101391
Please post there so Opera can see the interest!