Vista, Firefox 2.0.0.3, and WMP 11

User Help for Mozilla Firefox
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a;skdjfajf;ak
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Post by a;skdjfajf;ak »

OK, since this appears to be a trunk issue, do we file a bug, or wait and see if there something about the plugin that does like Cairo ?

I did leave a post at the Port25 page, you have to register (free) to be able to post, but so far no replies have been forthcoming, but it could take awhile I would suspect to check out, or perhaps, as with sometimes happens when you test 'trunks' your just left in the cold.
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Post by rtms »

I'm trying to play the videos but all it says is that I have to install the Windows Media Player Active X plugin. I'm on Vista, 32 bit, home premium using the latest stable version of FIREFOX. I installed that new plugin but it doesn't seem to work at the site below.

I'm using this site to test the plugin.
http://www.ctv.ca/mini/degrassi2006/static/video.html
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Post by Guest »

It doesn't work for yahoo music videos, blah, back to the netscape plugin I go, grr.
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Vectorspace
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Post by Vectorspace »

Yahoo Music Videos use Flash now, don't they? But previously it needed ActiveX. That ctv site needs ActiveX specifically as well.

Those two sites specifically detect WMP ActiveX support in the browser, and if they don't find it they say install the ActiveX plugin. Their features may now work in the new plugin, but they don't know that yet so their sites still look specifically for ActiveX and still specifically embed ActiveX.
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Post by eternal23x »

Has anybody successfully scripted against the new plug-in? I'm trying to enable DRM pre-delivery but running GetSystemInfo() returns "Unknown function"
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Post by Vectorspace »

I've scripted play, pause, and stop but I don't know about any other controls.
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Post by Vectorspace »

New: I hammered together a pathetically simple scripting demo: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vectorspac ... ewplug.htm
Works in Firefox (if the new plugin is installed) and IE. It would probably work in any other modern Windows browser that the new plugin works in.
"All things being equal, the simplest answer is usually the correct one" - Occam's Razor
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Alice
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Post by Alice »

This was posted on the Windows Media Player Firefox Plugin - Download page by "Rossman" on Sat 21 April 2007 14:21
re: Windows Media Player Firefox Plugin - Download

I have posted sample code on how to use the new plug-in in Firefox (as well as good ole IE) at my website at:
http://www.therossman.org/experiments/wmp_play.html

Hope this helps someone out, I've also covered z-index Windows Media Player and Flash which has been a huge problem until this new plugin was released,

Thanks for finally getting this out there, Microsoft!

Cheers,
Rossman

From his http://www.therossman.org/experiments/wmp_play.html web page:
This is a quick HOWTO on the new Windows Media Player plugin for Firefox. It will show you how to create the Windows Media Player object in both Firefox and Internet Explorer, playing back video in the plugin, and also scripting the plug-in and listening for events in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. To make it a little more fun I've also built a flash user interface which will call the javascript functions to control the Windows Media Player

Rossman uses the new MIME type, "application/x-ms-wmp" in his page code. Searching Google on "application/x-ms-wmp" I came up with:
http://blogs.msdn.com/eric_anderson/arc ... refox.aspx
which says,
If you use the plug-ins new MIME type though, you can take advantage of fuller design time parameter support, based on 9.0 interfaces. We will have the MSDN documentation updated to reflect the supported tags/elements in the near future. In the meantime, if you want to start using the new plug-in, you can force your sites to use it by using the new application/x-ms-wmp MIME type.

Just one more example of exclusive coding, since it would eliminate non-IE browsers except for those able to use the new ffwmp plugin.
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Post by Vectorspace »

My pathetically simple scripting demo was even more pathetically simple than I thought!
Bookmarking that quick howto right now.

Scripted control of any media player will always be at best single platform, with the exception of Flash. That's likely why more and more sites are using Flash video now. Even msnbc.com does.

Any news on if this plugin works in other browsers yet?
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Post by Alice »

As far as released builds, in addition to Firefox 2, the new plugin also works in Firefox 1.5 and SeaMonkey 1.0.8, which I mentioned earlier. It also works (even when it is extracted and copied, without using the installer) on SeaMonkey 1.1 and SeaMonkey 1.1.1, as therube mentions here:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=540828

The new plugin does NOT work in Mozilla Suite 1.7.13. I got an "illegal operation in plugin" error on every embedded WMP test page I tried and the media did not play. I DO have JavaScript enabled.
Details here:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... 96#2852196

P.S. In this bugzilla report, comment #21, therube reports that the new WMP plugin does NOT work in Firefox 1.0.x.
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Post by Vectorspace »

I figured it would work in reasonably recent Gecko browsers. I'm mostly curious about non-Gecko browsers such as Opera.

I had a look on the Opera forums a short time ago, looks like it does just about work but is very buggy: http://my.opera.com/community/forums/fi ... id=2005455
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Alice
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Post by Alice »

Littlemutt wrote:EDIT: I found the .dll in a folder named: C:/Pfile/plugins
I copied the .dll into the Minefiled plugins folder, and now it shows up in the About:plugins - but there is no video or controls, only sound when trying to play a video from CNN.

Copied from another thread about the new WMP plugin not working in SeaMonkey 1.5a trunk build:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... 8&start=15
Andy Boze wrote:
Alice wrote:Since you don't have Firefox installed, I'm very interested in finding out if the installer did copy the plugin somewhere. Check to see if the installer copied "np-mswmp.dll" to another location, such as C:\PFiles\Plugins\ and let me know? That location was mentioned by Littlemutt and someone here mentioned finding it in D:\PFiles\Plugins\.

Indeed I found the plug-in installed at C:\PFiles\Plugins\. A couple of days ago I installed the plug-in on a machine where Firefox is installed, and I copied the .dll to SM1.5a's plug-ins folder. My results at CNN were the same as Littlemutt reported in http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... 38#2845738 .

Andy Boze wrote:
Andy Boze wrote:A couple of days ago I installed the plug-in on a machine where Firefox is installed, and I copied the .dll to SM1.5a's plug-ins folder. My results at CNN were the same as Littlemutt reported in http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... 38#2845738 .

That was on my office PC. I've got the new Firefox WMP .dll in my SM 1.5a plug-ins folder on my home PC now. I tried CNN videos and got the same thing as on my office PC -- just a grey rectangle where the video should be and with audio. I tinkered around a bit, disabling the standard WMP plug-in and then re-enabling it. After that, I still got the grey area, once, and then the next video I tried at CNN played, both video and sound, as are all subsequent ones at CNN. Still no luck with these, though. Nothing shows up in the page at all.
http://www.therossman.org/experiments/wmp_play.html
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vectorspac ... ewplug.htm
http://members.aol.com/jrzycrim01/mozil ... st-LS.html

Alice wrote:Thanks for confirming that the plugin was copied to C:\PFiles\Plugins\ even without Firefox installed. Other people have mentioned it being copied there when Firefox is not installed in the default location.

On the problem with CNN videos having sound but no video on Firefox trunk builds, wgianopoulos also mentioned it in this thread: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=541720
I just tried a video from http://www.cnn.com/ in Gran Paradiso with the new plugin and, after clicking the "Continue to Video" button, I also got just the sound but no video... the embedded WMP player console didn't even appear. however Scanorama reported in the same thread that the new plugin worked on Minefield with this video:
http://media.fairfax.com.au/?sy=smh&cat ... &rid=27428
..... and it worked for me, too, in Gran Paradiso with the new plugin (it also worked in the old plugin) so I'm not sure what is happening.

I eventually was able to get the CNN video working, using both the old and the new plugin, with both sound and video by "fooling around", like you did (disabling the WMP plugin scan then reenabling it in about:config). I also got this page working in the old plugin, which didn't work before, by "toggling" the plugin scan setting: http://wymette.home.att.net/files/wmvtest.htm
... but not this page: http://members.aol.com/jrzycrim01/mozil ... st-LS.html (since the WMP player is altogether missing, you can't click the "play" button to start the media, so there is no sound, ether).

Whatever is happening in trunk builds with the WMP plugin, old or new, it's buggy.
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a;skdjfajf;ak
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Post by a;skdjfajf;ak »

OK, I've been around awhile, but now suddenly I feel like an idiot - how do you disable the 'plugin scan' ? Not heard of such before.

I'm willing to try about anything to help pin down the problem.
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Alice
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Post by Alice »

Open about:config and find the preference plugin.scan.WindowsMediaPlayer then right-click and select Modify and change the setting from the default 7.0 to 12.0 or higher to disable the scan. Then right-click and select "Reset" to return to the default setting and reenable the scan.
Ref: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Plugin_scanning

How this "fixes" the problem in trunk builds with some embedded WMP videos, I don't know, but it doesn't work with other embedded WMP videos, as mentioned above, and it's only a temporary fix at that, since the problem with sound but no video (no player console) came back when I tried another CNN video.

I'm on Windows XP SP2 and my system detects the old WMP plugin (npdsplay.dll, etc) from the C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player folder and it's listed at the bottom of the about:plugins list, with the new plugin listed at the top. This doesn't seem to hurt anything, since the new plugin that's detected in the Firefox plugins folder "takes over".

P.S. What about this embedded WMP video... does it work for you in Minefield?
http://media.fairfax.com.au/?sy=smh&cat ... &rid=27428
..... it works for me Gran Paradiso with the new plugin and the old one, without needing to do any 'tinkering'.
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a;skdjfajf;ak
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Post by a;skdjfajf;ak »

Thanks Alice for the info, but it still won't work. I even tried removing Minefield again, and creating a path that Scanorama says he's using: C\program files\firefox\trunk , and when I tried to play a video was still the same, the only thing different was that Windows Firewall asked for permission to connect to the net. I suspect this is because that path has not been used since I installed Vista, its always been Minefield.

I'm out of ideas..
Alice stated:
..... it works for me Gran Paradiso with the new plugin and the old one, without needing to do any 'tinkering'.


Could you try removing the 'old' plugin dlls and see if the 'new' plugin works in your GP install, assuming you still have it loaded ? This would help determine maybe if its only trunks or an issue with trunks+Vista

Thanks for your help and ideas..
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