Too old for Flash, but not off YouTube yet.

Silent Observer · posted: 2014-02-03 00:58

When my laptop was made in 1998, YouTube wasn't yet a dream -- streaming video was something that came in a teeny little window, and probably only worked at all (over 56k dial-up link) if you waited for the file to download before you clicked play. My processor runs at 300 MHz, there's a motherboard maximum of 288 MiB RAM, and the video hardware wasn't a spectacular performer even for the early days of Win98.

But, today, I was able to view YouTube video over my WiFi link on that 1998 vintage Gateway Solo 2500.

No, there's no Flash plug-in that will work on that machine, that I've found -- but today I learned of a browser plug-in, called a userscript, that loads when my web browser (IceWeasel, included in antiX 13.2, as updated) loads, that intercepts calls to the YouTube Flash video player (and apparently a number of other Flash based video players), and loads the video as an <object> tag supported internally by the browser (i.e. a method that, if supported by YouTube, would allow their content to play without needing Flash). This support is built into all modern browsers; all the FireFox derivatives, SeaMonkey and IceApe, Chromium (hence probably Google Chrome), Midori and Epiphany, as long they have Greasemonkey or Scriptish script handling extensions installed; both are available from the"get add-ons" search inside the browsers I've checked.

========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://linternamagica.org/"
linktext was:"Linterna Magica"
====================================
is free and open software, which reduces dependency on proprietary plug-ins, should sit well with those who like that stuff, and the resource use is tiny -- the entire script is less than a megabyte in size. I'm a Linux noob (just started using Linux regularly about seven months ago), and it took me all of fifteen minutes to figure out how to get the script and extension installed. I like it a lot...

oldhoghead · posted: 2014-02-03 02:36

Nice find! __{{emoticon}}__ I'll have to check it out, got an old dell 1999 that might be able to utilize that feature.

cheers,
ohh

rust collector · posted: 2014-02-03 09:26

I have a quad core somethingsomething, and I think that can use it too, lol

fatmac · posted: 2014-02-03 10:28

Great to hear another old machine running perfectly under Linux after MS gave up on it. __{{emoticon}}__

Silent Observer · posted: 2014-02-03 13:00

rust collector wrote:I have a quad core somethingsomething, and I think that can use it too, lol

Well, yes; Linterna Magica is a good way to reduce dependency on proprietary software on even the most modern machine (and it works fine on my Core2Quad Q9400 with 4 GiB and MEPIS 11) for which you have a current Flash plugin available -- but the"magic" part, IMO, is in keeping abandoned hardware running. Not to mention it bypasses all the security issues with running a version of Flash that will never be updated again, as MEPIS users are stuck doing...

rokytnji · posted: 2014-02-03 15:11

Yes, it is a cool thingy.

watching-video-without-flash-11-or-html5-t4286.html

Silent Observer · posted: 2014-02-04 19:38

Roky, relative to your comment on that other thread that some You-Tube videos don't play, on my MEPIS system, I found that some videos want to start in gxine instead of VLC, presumably because they're a different file extension; it might be possible to change browser preferences to let IceWeasel (etc.) start those with the VLC plugin as well -- or just install the other video plugin(s). I watched one today that started in gxine, but still played correctly. I've also had a few of them crash the VLC plugin, though they usually work okay if I reload the page to restart the pugin.

valdoonican · posted: 2014-05-12 08:09

I just use the extension (I use firefox) shumway version 0.8.373
but i will keep this in mind if shumway stops working for me.

Silent Observer · posted: 2014-05-12 10:14

Hmmm. Looks as if shumway runs some games (I've been using Linterna Magica for video, but it doesn't work with vids that don't use YouTube style packaging); I'll have to check it to see if it'll fix my problems with Flash 11 vs. Flash 13 in SeaMonkey/MEPIS 64-bit.

Edit: Hmmm. Shumway extension won't install in SeaMonkey 2.23, to which I reverted a week or so ago because of an apparent bug in 2.25 mail filtering that causes filters to fail to find their folders and disable themselves. Given they talk about downloading a Firefox Beta along with installing the extension, I suspect it needs a significantly newer version of the Mozilla core than I have. So, something to keep an eye open for, but not a real help for this week...