ActiveX Plugin Instability?

[ddod]

We have created a web page player for our local IPTV solution (on campus) using VLC. We are using both the mozilla plugin and the activeX plugin in the page. The page works great except their seems to be quite a few problem still the with the ActiveX plugin. In many instances, things just don't work (fullscreen, audio, video, crashing/freezing, etc.). Almost every time a user has issues with explorer, we have them test it in firefox. It always works fine in firefox.

Now I am not really looking for an explorer vs firefox discussion. I am simply looking for an answer to what stage in the development the plugins are at. The mozilla one just seems a lot more stable. Is this true? What are the future plans for both versions of the plugins? If the activeX plugin is known to be unstable, what is the timeline for it becoming stable, etc? Maybe the way I am implementing it is unstable.

Officially we want to support both browsers. But we may need to change our policy for VLC to say "if we can get it working in one browser, then that is good enough" (and then rely on firefox if their instance of IE is causing problems).

Any ideas, questions? Thanks for your help.

- Dan

PS. I have just started hearing about the JVLC project. Will we be able to use this to embed players in a webpage using JAVA instead of the the plugins?

[Quovodis]

We have created a web page player for our local IPTV solution (on campus) using VLC. We are using both the mozilla plugin and the activeX plugin in the page. The page works great except their seems to be quite a few problem still the with the ActiveX plugin. In many instances, things just don't work (fullscreen, audio, video, crashing/freezing, etc.). Almost every time a user has issues with explorer, we have them test it in firefox. It always works fine in firefox.

What version of VLC are you using and do you have a test page which shows this problem ?

Now I am not really looking for an explorer vs firefox discussion. I am simply looking for an answer to what stage in the development the plugins are at. The mozilla one just seems a lot more stable. Is this true? What are the future plans for both versions of the plugins? If the activeX plugin is know to be unstable, what is the timeline for it becoming stable, etc? Maybe the way I am implementing it is unstable.

both Activex and Mozilla uses the same underlying code as far as media handling is concerned, so i can't really believe that the firefox plugin is 'more' stable than activex. on which version of windows are you using the activex control ?

[ddod]

We are using the latest version of VLC 0.8.6c or 0.8.6b. I could give you the website but you won't be able to see any video. We are using it to play our IPTV streams (which are multicast). I based the javascript logic and the embed code off the sample code at http://people.videolan.org/~damienf/plugin-0.8.6.html.

We are seeing these problems on windows XP on both explorer 6 and 7 (of course we are seeing problems on VIsta as well). I can post some code here if that helps. I really appreciate your help. Like I mentioned before, it could be the way i am activating the controls in explorer. But like I said, I based the code of the example given here in the forums. It is possible I changed something that had an adverse effect and I just can't see it.

Is no one else seeing problem with the activeX plugin?

Thanks again.

[ddod]

I have more information. The biggest issue we have been having with explorer and the activex plugin is that the video disappears when they try to go fullscreen (by double clinking the video).

However, this is what is really happening. Once control is activated (you know the "click here to activate" message) it simply disappears. I don't know where it is going but I can get it back by simply resizing or scrolling the browser window. From then on, it seems to work fine. Here is the URL to the page: <URL no longer valid>

You won't be able to view the video since they are local Multicast streams but you can see the behavior. Remember to be in either explorer 6 or 7. You can either click the window or simply tab till you get the "Press SPACEBAR or ENTER to activate and use this control" message. You will see the VLC cone disappear once the control is activated. If you resize the browser window or scroll, you will see the cone re-appear.

I am not sure what is causing this, maybe it is the CSS. If anyone could help me track this down, I would greatly appreciate it. It starting to drive me mad.

Thanks.

[stoffe123]

I get the following error message in a popup on the html-page with the active x plugin:

windows has blocked this software because it can't verify the publisher.

I am using IE 7.0.5... and windows XP sp2

then the vlc element doesn't exist in the javascript code (naturally)

the same happens even with browser security level set to "low".

[ddod]

We have other mechanisms in place to ensure that our users have already installed the plugin before they get to this page.

[stoffe123]

ok. Thanx for the quick reply! Any short hint on how to do that in a smart way for both IE and mozilla? (An easy way for end user to install the plugin.)

[ddod]

I finally was able to determine the problem. It appears that the <object> tag has issues in IE if it is not embedded in a table. I am using <DIV> tags and CSS for all my formatting and IE did not like this. It took me a while to track down, simply because it makes no sense. I don't think this is a VLC activeX issue but it I guess it could be (not likely); maybe someone ought to look at it more closely. Simply placing the object within a table fixed it. Here is what I learned in a little more detail.

Code: Select all

<div><object>...</object></div>

The above works fine in firefox but in IE it produces the error I have described in earlier posts in this thread. Simply adding a <table> tag, makes IE happy.

Code: Select all

<div><table><object>...</object></table></div>

When I finally discovered this I was irritated because it caused us so much grief for such a simple little thing. If anyone has any more insight on this, I would greatly appreciate it right now. In the meantime, I'll view it as yet another ridiculous hoop we have to jump through to get things to work in IE.

[Quovodis]

i can't really explain the behaviour regarding DIV and TABLE, to me that sounds like a bug in IE, as the activex plugin is completely ignorant (and uninteresed) of where it is currently embedded.
However, i can help regarding the "click here to activate" issue. basically, you can avoid this message and have the plugin activated by default by instantiating the 'object' through javascript whose code isn't in the main HTML page. basically you need to create a vlc.js file and load it through <SCRIPT language="Javascript" SRC=".../vlc.js">. This was done by M$ to get around some patent and avoid paying a lot of money.