1167572 - [Linux] Youtube video content is not visible when tabs are shared

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: WebRTC, defect)

Description

[Catalin Varga [QA][:VarCat]]

Environment:

FF 38.0.5
Build id: 20150521175336
OS: Ubuntu 14.04 x64

STR:

1. Start a conversation on loop client from Firefox for Linux
2. Select a window to share and click 'Share my Tabs'
3. Send the conversation link to a second PC and make the second PC join the conversation.
4. In one of the shared tabs open a youtube video( the video is played via flash player)

Issue:
The youtube video content is not visible on the second PC .

Note:
This issue is reproducible if the shared  tabs are on Linux.
This issue is reproducible only on youtube videos played via flash player.

Comment 1

[Catalin Varga [QA][:VarCat]]

This bug is not reproducible if instead of tabs the window is shared.

Comment 2

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Most likely a core webrtc issue as Hello just gets a stream.

Comment 3

[Adam Roach [:abr]]

I suspect this is a WONTFIX.

The issue here is that Flash is loaded via NPAPI, which means that its video is rendered by Flash's code, not Firefox's. The tab sharing code runs the Firefox rendering engine and turns the output into a video stream.

While this isn't an insurmountable problem, it's probably not worth investing the resources into. Adobe stopped updating the NPAPI version of its Flash plugin for Linux over three years ago (see <http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplatform/whitepapers/roadmap.html>), and the overall push is to use HTML5 in preference to Flash whenever possible (for Youtube in particular, see <https://www.youtube.com/html5>).

This means that the issue will arise not just with Flash, but with any NPAPI plugin used to render media. But given that we're actively discouraging the use of such plugins (see <https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2014/02/28/update-on-plugin-activation/>), that also seems like a reasonable thing to let happen.

Comment 4

[Maire Reavy [:mreavy]]

Hi Catalin -- Can you test to see if this works on Windows and Mac?  I agree with Adam that this is likely a WONTFIX, but I'd like to understand the scope of the issue.  Thanks.

Comment 5

[Catalin Varga [QA][:VarCat]]

I've tested on both windows and Mac by forcing youtube to use flash player.
This issue is reproducible on Windows using the latest FF 39 build but it's not reproducible on Mac