integrate "HTML5 Media Tuner" into the browser

[joe04]

I just learned of @JustOff's HTML5 Media Tuner extension today, from my bug report. This extension is effectively a workaround for genuine MSE bugs in Pale Moon and perhaps also any problematic sites (which I mention as a possibility not knowing any specifics, since there are only a few sites I watch videos).

My suggestion is to integrate this functionality into the browser itself, because:
a) It's a per-domain workaround
b) which means there are a set of known domains for which it's needed for default MSE settings
c) thus it'd be best for all PM users to get this list by default and not have to fuss with it.

I never thought about MSE settings before today, and frankly if PM wants to appeal to a broader range of users (many of whom have little or no interest/willingness to learn/tinker) then details like this should "just work" out of the box with default settings. Like they do in all the major browsers.

Otherwise it's limited to a small cadre of savvy users who are willing to install yet another extension and fuss with it, mostly all just redundantly making the same workarounds. Meanwhile this becomes yet another buggy thing that turns people away from PM.

Edit to add:
* This is fundamentally no different than site-specific UA overrides, i.e. "get the site to work" and "get the videos to play properly"
* The extension still may be useful for people wanting Flash and such. I'm only requesting the automated workarounds for default settings be added to the browser (perhaps as a list like HSTS preloads or about:configs like SSUAOs -- whatever implementation makes sense)

[Moonchild]

Our media support is still a work in progress -- we hope to not need workarounds when this is finished, so instead of putting time and effort into integrating this functionality, and creating a whitelist/blacklist and constantly having to maintain that list as well as needing a distribution/delivery method, we're first and foremost trying to fix MSE and media handling so this won't be necessary any longer. The extension is a good solution for people who need this to be working "right now" while we're still improving the media back-end.

[joe04]

But how realistic is that hope? I don't know video technical details, nor do I want to, but do you honestly think you'll not need workarounds at all at some point? I'm skeptical of that claim.

Spending a little time (even just merging in the subset of the extension as-is with its single JSON blacklist) to build-in a band-aid mechanism may save you and Travis headaches, and users frustration, in the long-run.

edit: maintaining and distributing should be no different than SSUAOs now.

[adisib]

maintaining and distributing should be no different than SSUAOs now.

SSUAO's are only used because that is the only thing that the browser can do in those situations; fixing it is entirely on the shoulders of the website developers. Having to maintain a list like that is never a good idea unless it is the only way about it.

[joe04]

No, fixing it is not entirely on the site's shoulders.

Here's the real history of the web and standards:
http://diveintohtml5.info/past.html
(tldr: competing browsers have always had to keep up with eachother. "It works in Chrome" is the de facto standard nowadays, following in the lineage of Netscape and IE and to a lesser extent Firefox)

And here's what the real browsing public is like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ
(that was 8 years ago, and it's in no way smarter about such things today)

Hence the need to get details like UAO and MSE working in the browser out-of-the-box to keep up with the bigs on sites that matter. That is, unless you want Pale Moon to remain a tiny niche for power users.

[joe04]

The tone of my last post was too harsh, so I apologize for that.

I've already written enough, so I'll stop here and not harp on this anymore. I respect whatever decision Moonchild makes.

[adisib]

No, fixing it is not entirely on the site's shoulders.

Here's the real history of the web and standards:
http://diveintohtml5.info/past.html
(tldr: competing browsers have always had to keep up with eachother. "It works in Chrome" is the de facto standard nowadays, following in the lineage of Netscape and IE and to a lesser extent Firefox)

Standards have nothing to do with user agent overrides. User agent overrides are for when sites refuse to cooperate with anything that isn't named "Chrome" or "Firefox". Pretending to be Chrome doesn't change Pale Moon's feature set or standards compliance. If a site refuses to work with a browser named "Pale Moon", what do you expect Pale Moon to do about that other than be forced to maintain a list and wait for the website to not serve broken content to unknown browsers?

Or did you think I meant media when I said that? I meant user agent overrides were only used because the problems that the fix are on the website's shoulders. That isn't the case for MSE, so Pale Moon should not resort to using something like user agent overrides.

[kizo07]

Little of topic, related anyway...

Joe, you don't need to apologize... imo you wasn't to harsh at all , actually you had silk gloves on you.

Watching your second video remind me that's unfortunate still (and more) 'reality'...in those days of reality's/selfies/consumers world.
If Pale Moon not want to remain a 'tiny niche for power users', maybe only solution would be to make some simple version/distro, out-of-the-box, like 'Pale moon for dumbass.' Some kind 'Protected from protections' version.
I would like also to see "It works for 'power users', it should work for everybody else", that is the de facto standard nowadays...but
And what's point? I understand Microsoft very well, actually. In Win 10 they finally made 'protection', to protect them from average (and under average) users indeed.
Those users, well so often, like to experiments, change, clean system (especially damage registry and system files)...without enough knowledge, without enough resources on pc and without common sense at all.
Hence, 99% hangs, crashes and issues are related to user itself...same with Pale Moon and also related OS/Pale Moon.
So, my message for them is: Please take out cord of your pc and hang yourself or crash with your car. It's probably best for everybody.

I also respect whatever decision Moonchild and devs/team makes.

And I have a message to them anyway...to quote Andy Warhol again...

'You have to do stuff that average people don't understand because those are the only good things. Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.'

[joe04]

Nice post, kizo. And that's a very appropriate quote from Warhol.

You're probably right that PM would have to be dumbed down quite a bit for it to be friendly to the ignorant masses. Dumbed down is the Google way and unfortunately seems to be much of the Mozilla way too now. That's a losing strategy anyways because not all sites are going to work with PM (sometimes no fault of PM) so this fact alone is going to turn away lots of people who expect any browser to just work like IE or Chrome. Plus there's the mobile and multi-device ways of doing things that are popular.

So, all things considered, it's good Moonchild keeps going along according to his vision of what a browser should be.

[Macca]

I wouldn't say Pale Moon needs to be really dumped down to be friendly to the masses. As long as it looked appealing (according to current fashion) and it just worked (without settings hassle), there would be no need to remove options under the hood. The biggest problem (I think) would be maintaining a "basic UI" for the masses and an "advanced UI" for the power users of sorts.

[kizo07]

for the masses

Yeah, and some tutorial and easy to use explanation like this f.e. https://www.sedenne.no/v/59087/denne-he ... alle-biler