VideoLAN Web Plugin: xpi vs crx

One of the main issue while preparing streaming solution is answering the obnoxious question:

• Question: Is possible to use the service through a browser?
• Answer: No, rtsp isn’t* http, a browser isn’t a tool for accessing any network content.

* Actually would be neat having rtsp support within the video tag but that’s yet another large can of worms

Once you say that you have half of your audience leaving. Non technical people is too much used to consider the browser the one and only key to internet. The remaining ones will ask something along those lines:

• Question: My target user is a complete idiottechnically impairednaive and unaccustomed and could not be confronted with the hassle of a complex installation procedure, is there something that fits the bill?
• Answer: VideoLAN Web Plugin

Usually that makes some people happy since it’s something they actually know or at least they have heard about. Some might start complaining since they experienced an old version and well it crashed a lot. What would you be beware of is the following one:

• Question: Actually I need to install the VideoLAN Web Plugin and it requires attention, isn’t there a quicker route?
• Answer: Yes xpi an crx for Firefox an Chrome

Ok, that answer is more or less from the future and it’s the main subject of this post: Seamless bundling something as big and complex as vlc and make our non tecnical and naive target user happy.

I picked the VideoLAN web plugin since it is actually quite good already, has a nice javascript interface to let you do _lots_ of nice stuff and there are people actually working on it. Additional points since it is available on windows and MacOSX. Some time ago I investigated how to use the extension facility of firefox to have the fabled “one click” install. The current way is quite straightforward and has already landed in the vlc git tree for the curious and lazy:

  
    vlc-plugin@videolan.org
    VideoLAN
    1.2.0-git
    
      
        {ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}
        1.5
        3.6.*
      
    
  

Putting that as install.rdf in a zip containing a directory called plugins with libvlc, it’s modules and obviously the npapi plugin does the trick quite well.

Chrome now has something similar and it seems also easier so that’s what I put in the manifest.json:

{
"name": "VideoLAN",
"version": "1.2.0.99",
"description": "VideoLan Web Plugin Bundle",
"plugins": [{"path":"plugins/npvlc.dll", "public":true }]
}

Looks simpler and neater, isn’t it? Now we get to the problematic part about chrome extension packaging:

It is mostly a zip BUT you have to prepend to it a small header with more or less just the signature.

You can do that either by using chrome built-in facility or by a small ruby script. Reimplementing the same logic in Makefile using openssl is an option, for now I’ll stick with crxmake.

Then first test build for win32 are available as xpi and crx hosted on lscube.org as usual.

Sadly the crx file layout and the not so tolerant firefox xpi unpacker make impossible having a single zip containing both the manifest.xpi and the install.rdf served as xpi and crx.

by the way, wordpress really sucks