[Gnash-dev] Open source flash xembed code.

[mark cox]

In case you didn't notice mike melanson is encouraging readers of his
blog to test a xembed plugin. I believe that gnash has some of the
same problems as the proprietry flash player that could be fixed by
following the same route.
mark


http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2007/04/bling.html

Penguin.SWF tracks development status and issues regarding the Linux
version of Adobe's Flash Player.

For future releases of the Adobe Flash Player for Unix platforms, we
would like to use a better method of integrating with the
encapsulating web browser. This method is known as XEmbed. It is
supported by some Unix web browsers but not all. Naturally, the best
reason for a browser to support this interface would be if the Flash
Player supported it. But without a reasonable test plugin, browser
authors are a little stuck.

That's why I threw together such a test plugin. Further, my corporate
masters have authorized me to release it as open source! I call the
plugin DiamondX. It operates by drawing a diamond in the specified
plugin space as such (note that this is a static image and not the
actual plugin in action):

The plugin can pop up a few modal dialog boxes which ought to be
honored by the browser. There is a better-looking context menu than
the one seen in the current Flash Player. Via the standard output, the
plugin will also communicate which relevant events it is receiving.
And get this: Keyboard focus should not follow the mouse with this
example plugin!

There will hopefully be more iterations of this plugin as I plan to
use it as a testbench for implementing windowless support (a.k.a.
wmode, transparency) in the plugin. This way, Linux can finally be on
equal footing with Windows and Mac for displaying the kind of
advertisements that take over the entire browser window. And I know
Linux users want that. Seriously, there are legitimate uses for said
feature as highlighted by the oft-reported "Javascript menus are
covered by SWF" bug.

http://multimedia.cx/diamondx/

So download DiamondX, compile it, and try it out with your favorite
browser. If your favorite browser does not yet have XEmbed support,
you may wish to ask the authors to think about implementing it.


Posted by Mike Melanson on April 20, 2007 12:18 PM | Permalin