November 2020 Roundup (Patreon)

Hey all! Here's everything I worked on during the month of November.

NoPlugin

NoPlugin is my browser extension that detects legacy plugin content in web pages (Flash, QuickTime, Windows Media, etc.) and allows some of it to be played in the browser, with the option of downloading incompatible files for playback in native media players. I released a minor update in September with new limited analytics, so I could get a feel for how NoPlugin is used and where it needs to be improved.

The analytics data informed me that the vast majority of content detected by NoPlugin is Flash Player media, around 80% over the past week. That probably shouldn't be too surpising, considering Flash had a longer life than other legacy browser plugins, but NoPlugin currently has limited support for Flash embeds. Right now it can't play any Flash content in-browser, but it does walk you through opening the URL in the Flash Projector desktop application, which usually works.

I'm now working on NoPlugin 7.0, which has two primary goals: improve Flash support, and update the interface. For Adobe Flash, I'm adding new code to the analytics reporting that sends the name of the Flash file if it can't be played in-browser. Only the file name will be sent to me (not the URL or any parameters), so I'm collecting this data in a way that doesn't expose browsing history or user data.

My hope with the new data collection is that I'll be able to see which Flash-based video players are most common, and NoPlugin can be updated to extract the media URLs and possibly play them in the browser. I expect some of the results will also be objects NoPlugin can filter out in the future, like fallbacks for modern HTML5 players and data-collecting objects.

The other key change with NoPlugin 7.0 will be updating the interface. Right now, NoPlugin shows a bar at the top of the page if it replaced any plugin objects, informing users of the change and providing an option to report bugs. The bar was originally designed to mirror Chrome's "plugin missing" warning, but it wastes screen space and occasionally makes the top of pages inaccessible.

NoPlugin 7.0 will show the same message, but now as a tooltip that appears when you hover your mouse over replaced media content. It looks much more modern, and is less intrusive. The 'Not working?' button might be replaced with different controls before the final release — I'm still experimenting with some ideas there.

There are some other changes I'm hoping to get working for 7.0, like improved playlist handling, new instructions for running Flash Projector under Chrome OS, and possibly an extensions settings page. I'm hoping to get this update out before the end of December.

PhotoStack

PhotoStack only received one minor change this month: all user data is now stored with localForage (which uses WebSQL or IndexedDB), instead of only watermarks being stored that way. I'm working to implement a settings page with some new options, and this step was a precursor to that.