OWB and plugins?

I seem to remember someone mentioning that the plugin interface was already implemented in OWB. So how do I write a plugin?

I was mostly thinking about a flash replacement plugin that could route the data to getVideo or something. I think OWB-MOS already has this feature and it should be fairly simple to port, or make another kind of if the API if available.

@Deniil

having "send to clipdown" as a contextmenu wouldnt be bad either for files.

@Deniil
Apart from the API being NPAPI (or a closely compatible Amiga-ised version) I don't know. I guess you'd need to look at OWB source code, which is stored somewhere.

@ChrisH

But if the API exists and is fairly common (Amiga-like NPAPI), how come there are not a single plugin available??

Anyway, I rather not dive through megabytes of source to find out an API. There has to be some docs somewhere.

@Deniil

http://os4depot.net/index.php?functio ... work/browser/np_audio.lha

I think the source code is provided I have not checked.

@Deniil

Check this:

http://bugs.os4depot.net/?function=viewcomments&issueid=318

@Deniil

Sounds like a good idea and if that could be acieved surely it wouldn't be much more complicated to go a step further and do something similar with Gnash?

@Daniel

Problem with Gnash is that it's too slow to be usable on web apps, even latest 0.8.8 needs optimizations, this is the reason why afxgroup didn't release it altrought was more or less done at that time

A solution for videos is HTML5, as Fab already do for his browser, but off course a Gnash plugin can be created ...

@samo79
Just to summarise the link you posted: OWB does not have a plug-in API finished nor enabled. And using the IBrowse version of the API may not make sense, since it is 68k only.

Yes, more or less ...

@samo79

Quote:

That conversation sounded seriously stuck

But my point is that we shouldn't need a flash plugin, we need a flash *replacement* plugin. For my needs something that can just play a video.

Or one step further; something that can interpret flash enought to be functional, but skip the fading and sliding of images, playing music etc. just provide the gadgets the code specifies to be able to navigate a page or upload stuff to sites requiring flash to upload for example.

It could even build its very primitive GUI in a window of its own (just like mplayer is now playing youtube on its own) providing some gadgets or links or whatever the code wants it to do. Or perhaps it's impossible. Perhaps flash is waaaay to complex to just rip stuff out of the stream...??

@Deniil

Quote:

What we need for playing video inside an OWB window or another modern browser you like is the HTML5 video, this is an element introduced in the HTML 5.0 draft specification.

To have this on OS4 we have only a few ways to follow:

- Written a proper support for OWB 3.30 and then send the diffs to Joerg
- Port OWB MUI from MorphOS, (the source code is availible since weeks) as it have this support already
- Waiting for an usable Timberwolf release (it comes with Video support built-in)

This is the situation regarding HTML5.

Regarding Flash we may write a Gnash plugin based to the latest 0.8.8 (Amiga source of Gnash is availible on CVS), this would be the better solution as the majority of the video and streaming apps are Flash only (not HTML5 yet)

also application, banners and so on are written with Flash, but there is a huge problem, Gnash is too slow to be usable at this stage !

If you ask for my opinion, i would port OWB from MorphOS directly, it is a complete browser, it support both HTML5 video and Flash (via SWFDec on MorphOS but we may use Gnash instead) and it is written in an Amiga way

Quote:

It's seems a strange solution to me (IMHO), i really doubt about its final usability, what we need is a complete solution not somethings "quite strange" adaptation.

The real solution are above, what Amiga's devs choice will be another story ...

@Deniil

Quote:It's implemented and working in AmigaOS 4x. port of OWB as well (with the only AmigaOS 4.x NPAPI plugin I ever got, an useless JavaScript example plugin from afxgroup), but since nobody even tried to implement or port a real plugin it's disabled.


Quote:Why a replacement? Porting libgnashplugin.so to AmigaOS 4.x is trivial, and there even is a 1000 Euro bounty for it.

Quote:The MorphOS OWB uses MUI and with MUI plugins are impossible. Maybe it's possible with MUI4, but on AmigaOS with MUI 3.9 you'd have to use something as extremely ugly as it had to be done in IBrowse as workaround where the browser, instead of the plugin itself, has to render the plugin graphics into the window.

@joerg

at least something easy could be done before some bigger part. Like for example beeing able to copy an flash url to clipboard so the user can send it to clipdown/getvideo later.

Like now i can go to a youtube page, copy the url to a video and then fire up clipdown to do what i want it to. I use it to download bigger files too.

But the problem is if an flash is not on youtube but on a normal page like for example some playstation page where they have alot of text and then a picture with playbutton over it. It would start probably a flash video. Or some page where theres mixed texts and some flash videos.

Pages like this only gives an image with question mark. Would be nice to be able to for example donwload the file or just copy the url or able to download the .swf file. If for example someone wants to check it with gnash later.

http://www.macloo.com/examples/flash/animation/index.htm

Then theres page like this. I dont know how it works but is it in any way possible to get the url to the video (if its flash). If you see the big picture it has a play button on it. If you press it not much happens. On windows ofcourse it plays the video. But on amiga with OWB nothing. Im no expert so i dont know how it works on that page.

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/09/21/bio ... gameplay-video/#continued

@joerg

Quote:

In case you wouldn't know, NPAPI specifies two rendering modes: windowed, where the plugin redraws itself (breaking possibly transparency and z-order in the page) and windowless, where the plugin draws only when the browser requests it. Windowed mode sucks, but it is generally used for speed reasons.

Both can be done with or without MUI, that's totally irrelevant here.

@Fab

Is there any luck that we can motivate you by money (bounty) to make port to aos4 of your version of OWB ? Or maybe somehow else ? Because while Joerg still do fixes for OWB, there will be nothing new in terms of new features from him for OWB (because OWB its only core:) ), and even enabling of NPAPI makes a problem (just do not undestand, why just not enable it at all for all the time?). We all the time say about the same "please enable NPAPI, please any download manager", but looks like my avatar say more about :)

Will be pretty cool if we can somehow motivate you for such work. You know your code better than anyone else, and maybe it will not take for you so many time ..

@joerg

again.. if i compile libgnasplugin.so (and it could be done since months..) in which way i can test it?
If someone build a plugin for Mozilla on Linux/Windows/Mac is sure that it will work if it is build correctly but i'm not writing it for any of that platforms. So again, i can send to you a libgnashplugin.so, but this means that you and me should be live in the same house to check if something is wrong.
Instead we could start from linux version of the plugin and try together to change it accordly OS4 specifications.
I can also divide the bounty if this is the problem (money).

@afxgroup

as far as I understood Joerg, the Problem is, that currently there IS no AmigaOS4 specification of NPAPI and that he doesn't want to do that. Anybody who's willing to do any kind of plugin which renders any graphics to the browser window should do these specifications. Afterwards Joerg would apply this specifications to OWB's plugin interface and that's it.

Of course, I could be wrong, but I think the point here is, that Joerg wants to have a plugin + OS4 related spcification of NPAPI.

Sorry, if I wrote non-sense

nexus

@nexus
That's how I understood it.

And presumably the person writing the plugin(s) would have a better idea what would be needed by an Amiga version of the NPAPI specification.

@all

Joerg hasn't a functionnal Amiga-NG actually, isn't it ???