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rp-opener Extension
This extension is meant to play any embedded RealPlayer files on a
webpage. It is needed because some error with RealPlayer on the
Linux (and possible others) platform will prevent embedded files from
playing (it depends on how the website creators wrote the HTML).
Usually, a webpage viewer would have to view the webpage's source in
order to find the embedded file and manually play it. The rp-opener
extension is supposed to make this easier by automatically locating any
embedded RealPlayer files and opening RealPlayer to play them.
Using rp-opener is very
simple. Just right-click most anywhere on a webpage, and Mozilla's
popup menu should appear. One of the menu items listed should simply
be called RealPlayer.
When you click on it, if there are any RealPlayer files embedded into
the page, then RealPlayer will be opened to play them. If there are no
embedded RealPlayer files, then a dialog box will popup indicating such.
Be careful, though, because rp-opener will play all
the embedded RealPlayer files on a given webpage. If there are
five embedded files on a page, then each one will be played
consecutively. Realistically, most websites will put only one
embedded media file on a webpage (discounting embedded Flash files).
Right now, rp-opener is in a
very primitive state (only version 0.01). It only works with
Mozilla, not Firebird. Also, the location of RealPlayer is locked
in at /usr/local/bin/realplay and you can't change it (yet). So, you would at the very least need a link in /usr/local/bin/ to realplay. Obviously, there are two major things to work on for the next version(s):
- Get rp-opener to work on Mozilla Firebird.
- Make the location of RealPlayer a changeable preference.
So, if you want to try it out, just download the latest version of rp-opener and install it. I've tested this only on Mozilla
1.4, but it should probably work on some older versions.
Downloads:
rp-opener version 0.06
2003-07-20: On webpages with multiple embedded files,
rp-opener will now
only open one file at a time.
Since different website creators write their webpages in different
ways, sometimes they use two embed tags to embed videos (like
http://www.moviefone.com/ and
this french site). Previous versions of
rp-opener will open both/all embedded files at the same time, which is annoying. The new version should be an improvement.
rp-opener version 0.05
2003-07-19: Added a user interface to change the preferences for rp-opener. The interface should work in both Firebird and Mozilla 1.4. In Mozilla 1.4, the preferences for rp-opener can be found under Preferences -> Advanced -> RealPlayer Opener. However, under Mozilla 1.4, make sure you click on the topmost Ok in order to save any changes.
rp-opener version 0.04
2003-07-12: Now,
rp-opener should, hopefully, work with most modern/current builds of
Firebird. Also,
rp-opener
should be able to play most embedded RealPlayer files that are in
frames. But it probably won't work on pages that have frames
within frames within frames (a recursive function would be needed for
those).
rp-opener now
also checks to see if an embedded RealPlayer file is on some RTSP
server by checking the source/file-location of the embedded file.
rp-opener version 0.03
2003-07-11: rp-opener
now makes HTTP requests to try to confirm that a media file exists and
is accessible. It also tries to "figure out" the location of a
file if it can't be found on the first attempt to play it.
rp-opener version 0.02
2003-07-10: New version that now has a preference to set the location of RealPlayer. However, the user must go to
about:config to set the preference. Look for the preference called
rp-opener.rpLocation and set it to the location of RealPlayer on your system.
rp-opener version 0.01
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