Firefox on XO

T Gillett tgillett at gmail.com
Sun Jan 8 18:56:32 EST 2017 

A followup on the RE site.

Disabling the Shockwave Flash plugin on FF Ubuntu does not affect the
operation of the RE web site.
So clearly this plugin is not essential to the operation of the site.

But disabling it on the FF XO causes the site not to load the interactive
picture.

On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 8:34 AM, T Gillett <tgillett at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Adam
>
> At present I am mainly working with FF26 out of the repo because it is
> correctly configured for XO re screen sizing etc, and the behaviour in
> relation to sound seems to be the same as FF 50.
> As an aside, the performance of vanilla FF50 on XO-1.5 seems a bit
> sluggish compared to FF 26, and it is prone to crashing. Hopefully this can
> be sorted out in time.
>
> Regarding the sound issues, we have done some more investigation on this.
> I think the ALSA / Pulse Audio thing may be something of a red herring,
> because there are sites where FF on XO will happily play audio, and
> specifically mp3 files.
> So sound is basically working.
>
> We looked at the various sites with Inspector in FF, on both the XO -1.5
> platform and on FF running on Ubuntu and Windows.
> The first thing we found was that the HTML delivered to the browser is
> quite different depending on the platform, even for the same version of FF.
>
> Example 1.
> ----------------
> On the robbbenson page which has a simple link to an mp3 file, the HTML
> code looks like this:
>
> On FF on Ubuntu, Inspector shows
> <body>
> <video autoplay=""  controls=""  style="height: 28px; width: 66%;"></video>
> </body>
>
> On FF (ver 26 or ver 50) on XO, Inspector shows:
> <body marginwidth="0"; marginheight="0">
> <embed height="100%"; width="100%; name="plugin";
>    src="http//robbbenson.com/01%20Eve.mp3"  type="audio/mpeg"> </embed>
> </body>
>
> The <embed> tag in the HTML delivered to FF on XO invokes the VLC plugin
> (the user is prompted to activate the VLC Plugin), while on the other
> platforms, the <video> tag is used.
>
> Clearly the browser is telling the web server about its capabilities, and
> the web server then sends the appropriate version of the HTML.
>
> The HTML sent to FF/XO invokes the VLC plugin and so the sound from the
> mp3 file plays happily.
>
>
> Example 2.
> ----------------
> On the w3school Audio page, the HTML uses the <audio> tag and includes
> lines for both mp3 and ogg versions of the sound files.
>
> When you run the example you can edit the html. If you edit out the .ogg
> line and then the sound will not work.
>
> The FF/XO browser in this case can not run the mp3 file using the <audio>
> tag, but it can run the ogg file, so the site works ok on the XO.
>
>
> Example 3.
> -----------------
> On the ReadingEggs site the HTML is again different depending on the
> platform:
>
> On FF Ubuntu the HTML uses the <audio> tag with only mp3 files provided.
>
> On FF XO the HTML attempts to use a FlashAudio plugin, but sound does not
> work:
>
> <div id="JSFlashContainer"; class="JSFlashContainer";
> type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="/soundjs/FlashAudioPlugin.swf";
> ...
> <object id="flashAudioContainer";  ...  type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
> data="/soundjs/FlashAudioPlugin.swf"
> style ...    ></object></div>
>
> So the FlashAudio plugin obviously does not work for playing mp3 files on
> the XO.
>
> This leads me to think that the problem may lie in the configuration of FF
> on XO, specifically in how it tells the web server what its capabilities
> are for rendering sound.
> I suspect that if the HTML from the RE site invoked the VLC plugin rather
> than the FlashAudio plugin, the sound on the RE site would work.
>
> Investigations continue....
>
> Regards
> Terry
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 8, 2017 at 1:45 AM, Adam Holt <holt at laptop.org> wrote:
>
>> Thanks much Terry -
>>
>> FireFox 50 will add its own eccentricities inevitably, but many
>> deployments would prefer that over Epiphany and FF25/26 (if folks are
>> miraculously able to get FF50 to a semi-stable state of known workarounds?)
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at 11:12 PM, T Gillett <tgillett at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> A little more on this...
>>>
>>> I looked at some HTML5 audio and video tutorial sites as below, and
>>> found that the demonstrations on these sites *all work* just fine with
>>> sound in Firefox Ver 26 as installed from the repo ($ sudo yum update; sudo
>>> yum install -y firefox)
>>>
>>> Demo Sites - working sound
>>>
>>>     www.w3schools.com/html/html5_audio.asp
>>>
>>>     www.w3schools.com/html/html5_video.asp
>>>
>>>      butlerccwebdev.net/support/html5-video/audio-demo.html
>>>
>>>      www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webaudio/intro
>>>
>>> Also the YouTube sites work OK with sound.
>>>
>>>
>>> So obviously FF on XO is quite capable of delivering sound for a certain
>>> range of websites, but not for others.
>>> Understanding the difference between working and non-working web sites
>>> may provide a clue as to what is going on.
>>>
>>> Curiously, I found that the FF ver 50 version crashes when you try to
>>> load up the w3chools demo pages even before trying to start the audio.
>>>
>>> Thanks in advance to anyone who has the time and inclination to
>>> contribute to this.
>>>
>>>
>>> Regards
>>> Terry
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>> Message: 1
>>>> Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2017 13:05:59 +1000
>>>> From: T Gillett <tgillett at gmail.com>
>>>> To: "Devel's in the Details" <devel at lists.laptop.org>
>>>> Subject: Firefox on XO
>>>> Message-ID:
>>>>         <CAD58EkxxzZ_6UWZB0zgam2wLbC0ms-f0gMbm_34O+G3mqBZKDQ at mail.gm
>>>> ail.com>
>>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>>>
>>>> Hi James
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for the response.
>>>>
>>>> I installed Firefox on the 32020 build two different ways to test:
>>>>
>>>> 1. Using 'yum install' to get it from the repo. This installs Ver 26 as
>>>> per
>>>> your email.
>>>> 2. Using the download (firefox-50.1.0.tar.bz2) from the Firefox
>>>> downloads
>>>> site which gives Ver 50.
>>>>
>>>> The behaviour of both versions with respect to the sound appears to be
>>>> the
>>>> same.
>>>>
>>>> The browsers will play an mp3 file when it is simply linked within a web
>>>> site, (by default using the VLC plug-in according to the FF
>>>> Preferences/Application dialogue) but will not play an mp3 file within
>>>> simple HTML5 sites (eg our vt-motoli site)
>>>> The Reading Eggs site works well visually (it won't work properly in
>>>> Epiphany), but is absolutely silent. As far as I understand, this site
>>>> is
>>>> using Flash.
>>>>
>>>> It seems from some postings I read that FF expects to have Pulse Audio
>>>> support on Linux systems (and this is not included in the XO software).
>>>> So it is interesting that when you installed apulse, there is still an
>>>> issue.
>>>>
>>>> Ref:
>>>> https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/451074/firefox_to_
>>>> make_pulseaudio_a_hard_requirement_on/
>>>>
>>>> regards
>>>> Terry
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> > Message: 1
>>>> > Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2017 10:39:02 +1100
>>>> > From: James Cameron <quozl at laptop.org>
>>>> > To: devel at lists.laptop.org
>>>> > Subject: Re: Firefox on XO
>>>> > Message-ID: <20170103233902.GB5865 at us.netrek.org>
>>>> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
>>>> >
>>>> > G'day Terry,
>>>> >
>>>> > You didn't mention which version of Firefox.
>>>> >
>>>> > With firefox-26.0-2 from the Fedora 18 repository your no-sound issue
>>>> > with those sites reproduces.
>>>> >
>>>> > Then I installed apulse, a PulseAudio emulation for ALSA, but the
>>>> > problem persisted.  Looking at /proc/$(pidof firefox)/smaps the
>>>> > libpulse libraries are not mapped.
>>>> >
>>>> > Which Firefox are you trying, and how are you trying it?
>>>> >
>>>> > References:
>>>> >
>>>> > https://github.com/i-rinat/apulse (source)
>>>> > https://github.com/vitvegl/apulse-rpm (for the spec file)
>>>> >
>>>> > dependencies: gcc-c++ gcc-sh-linux-gnu cmake alsa-lib-devel
>>>> glib2-devel
>>>> > alsa-lib glib2
>>>> >
>>>> > On Sun, Jan 01, 2017 at 08:52:39AM +1000, T Gillett wrote:
>>>> > > Hi All
>>>> > >
>>>> > > I have installed Firefox on the current 13.2.8 build on XO-1.5 and
>>>> it
>>>> > works OK
>>>> > > except that there is no sound on some websites.
>>>> > > Other sites work OK.
>>>> > >
>>>> > > This seems to be a known problem:
>>>> > >     [1]https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=803042
>>>> > >     [2]http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=277040
>>>> > >     [3]https://ask.fedoraproject.org/en/question/65978/fedora-21-fi
>>>> > > refox-3603-and-flash-no-sound-system-sound-fine/
>>>> > >     [4]http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/144395/
>>>> > > firefox-html5-asoundrc-no-sound
>>>> > >
>>>> > > The issue seems to revolve around getting FF to use ALSA for sound,
>>>> and
>>>> > without
>>>> > > installing PulseAudio.
>>>> > >
>>>> > > I am wondering if anyone using Firefox on XO has encountered and/or
>>>> > solved this
>>>> > > problem.
>>>> > >
>>>> > > Thanks in advance for any help on this.
>>>> > > Terry
>>>> > >
>>>> > > ------------------------
>>>> > >
>>>> > > Some sites for testing the audio. Open any of these in a new tab
>>>> and you
>>>> > should
>>>> > > hear audio.
>>>> > >
>>>> > > 1.    [5]http://student.readingeggs.com//sample_lessons/#/sample/
>>>> > lesson/6/
>>>> > > activity/1
>>>> > > No sound on XO.
>>>> > >
>>>> > > 2.    [6]http://vt-motoli.org/CG/cg_03/cg_03.html#l-en
>>>> > > No sound on XO.
>>>> > >
>>>> > > 3.    [7]http://robbbenson.com/01%20Eve.mp3
>>>> > > Sound OK.
>>>> > >
>>>> > > References:
>>>> > >
>>>> > > [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=803042
>>>> > > [2] http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=277040
>>>> > > [3] https://ask.fedoraproject.org/en/question/65978/fedora-21-
>>>> > firefox-3603-and-flash-no-sound-system-sound-fine/
>>>> > > [4] http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/144395/firefox-
>>>> > html5-asoundrc-no-sound
>>>> > > [5] http://student.readingeggs.com//sample_lessons/#/sample/
>>>> > lesson/6/activity/2
>>>> > > [6] http://vt-motoli.org/CG/cg_03/cg_03.html#l-en
>>>> > > [7] http://robbbenson.com/01%20Eve.mp3
>>>> >
>>>> > > _______________________________________________
>>>> > > Devel mailing list
>>>> > > Devel at lists.laptop.org
>>>> > > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > --
>>>> > James Cameron
>>>> > http://quozl.netrek.org/
>>>> >
>>>> >
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