Closed Bug 121510 Opened 23 years ago Closed 20 years ago

News.com video has been re-written to support Mozilla but is still broken

Categories

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: Other, defect)

x86
Windows 2000
defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED FIXED

People

(Reporter: info, Unassigned)

References

()

Details

Attachments

(2 files)

News.com has been denying access to their video content for Mozilla and Netscape
6.x browsers for the past 8-10 months due to the incompatability issues with
their layout.  They have now re-written it and it works in Netscape 6.2 but not
in current builds.

Useing: Win2K
Build: 2002012103

What Happens:
Click on a video to view - it pops up their console in which you must choose a
video format.  Selecting the radio buttons has no effect.

What should happen:
selecting a radio button should reload the page and play the video.
reporter:

i don't remember: as news.com blocked us before, did they displayed any
information or the effect of clicking on a radio was the same like now in the
current builds?
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
It appears to be an entirely new interface than what was there last week.  For
the past fe months they were blocking Netscape 6.x and Mozilla with the message
that they were in the process of updating their interface and appologized for
the inconvenience.  Now, the new interface is on-line - no more blocking,
however what works in Netscape 6.2 does not work in recent Mozilla builds.

I don't know if this is related to any other form submit bugs that may be on the
books.
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
yeah. we're on it. hope next week we can do something about. right now jkeiser
is landig some interface changes [nsISubmittable] and I don't want to mess
around with things yet.
This is almost surely a "plugin detection" issue, but I need more confidence in
that.  I *strongly suspect* they are using the mimetypes array to see if
supported mimetype handler is present.  Since nightlies/Mozilla trunk builds
don't have the plugins installed, this is an issue.
However: I spoke to C|Net several months ago. The "layout issue" that this bug
mentions has to do with the following:
1. C|Net "scripts" both the WMP from Microsoft and the RealPlayer plugin, both
RealPlayer 8 and RealOne.  
2. ONLY RealPlayer 8, because it used the now deprecated XPCOM Plugin API, was
scriptable. WMP was NOT scriptable, and is still not scriptable, but I am
working with Microsoft to see if this issue has a solution.
Since C|Net could not guarantee a uniform experience, they decided to block us. 
Times have changed.  So in order to *really* test correctly, make sure:
1. That when you run about:plugins, you see a RealPlayer 8 or even WMP in there.
2. If not, get RealOne player (the free version) from:
http://www.real.com/realone/trial.html?dc=11111019&src=011218realhome_2,020109r1choice_h1
or else search for the legacy RealPlayer 8.  Although Real are using registry
parsing mechanism (http://mozilla.org/projects/plugins/install-scheme.html) you
*may* still have to drag DLL and XPT file over to your plugins directory.
3. Obtain WMP from
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/default.asp .  Unless
running N6.2.1, you'll definitely have to drag the DLLs to Mozilla nightly.
aha!  alexsavulof confirms that, in addition to problems mentioned above in my
last update, there's also form problem.  doh!
It looks like they have taken the scripting issue into account and have fixed
the issues and tested it in Nescape 6.2.  It works fine for me there with the
RealOne player.  As you've mentioned It's the form issue that seem to be at
issue now...
a script that's needed
the player selector from cnet.com

test it with 0.9.7 you'll see it works
Attachment #66492 - Attachment description: the cnet source of the video selector → the cnet source of the video selector (load it in 0.9.7, it works)
ok, i know now: 

is a damn piece of ... cookie:

video.cnet.com/cnet_newsVideo

How to convince your self:

Create a new test profile with the profile manager. Start NS621 and go to
cnet.com to watch a video. After that start mozilla 097 with the same profile
and go to watch the video.

make sure you have the needed plugin installed. if not, copy the missing plugin
files from the NS621home/plugins to mozilla097home/plugins. 

Debug info:

in the function vi_buildURL from visearch.js the following value is needed:

savedPrefs = [string] "ns6ormac_loasf"

(or a valid value for one of the other bandwidth/player combination)
this one is frst set in the html doc. :

...
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
var savedPrefs, radionum, str;

savedPrefs = vi_getCookie("cnet_newsVideo");

...

Status: ASSIGNED → NEW
Component: Form Submission → Cookies
-->
Assignee: alexsavulov → morse
QA Contact: vladimire → tever
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Target Milestone: --- → mozilla1.2
*** Bug 144312 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 135016 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 143737 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 141992 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 144645 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 148063 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
It would appear to be some problem with the cookies that CNET sets. This is a
temporary workaround for the video playback at CNET issue. 

Go to:

Preferences --> Privacy & Security --> Cookies --> Manage Stored cookes 

Remove cookies set by video.cnet.com

Now try again. You'll notice videos now load.
May have to repeat later.
The realplayer streams at news.com were working fine for me on Linux nightly
builds for several months but seem to have broken again as of a few builds ago.

With Linux build 2002060804:

After clicking the link, the realplayer window opens and the plug-in loads, the
main window loads http://news.com.com/#, and that's it, end game.

the javascript console shows the following error message:

Error: document.videoie has no properties

Source File: http://news.com.com/html/bb/bruNS.js

the source file contains:

//alert(document.getElementById('videoie'));
mySrc = document.videoie.SourceLink;
checkStream(mySrc);

That there is an evangelism issue--it obviously hasn't been rewritten to support
Netscape if that code is still in.  We don't support document.<id>.
Comment 18 is the only one to suggest a cookie problem.  And deleting old 
cookies cleared up that problem.  There was a recent bug involving cookie files 
having identical cookies, one starting with a dot in the domain name and the 
other without.  This has since been fixed, so I suppose that was what was 
happening here.  So I don't think this is a cookie issue any longer

However, I can't test this out because I can't seem to be able to install the 
plugin.  That sounds like I'm running into comment 19 and 20.  So now it looks 
like we have an evangelism issue.  Reassigning.
Component: Cookies → The Americas
Product: Browser → Tech Evangelism
Target Milestone: mozilla1.2alpha → ---
Version: other → unspecified
And now I'm really reassigning.
Assignee: morse → momoi
Status: ASSIGNED → NEW
QA Contact: tever → jonrubin
Does anyone know if CNet is doing anything about this?  Specifically, comment 19
and comment 20?  Assuming it is an evangelism issue, that is.

My Javascript error reads a little differently but nonetheless it doesn't work.
 Symptoms are identical to comment 19.  Here's the JS error I get:

Error: document.videoie has no properties
In http://news.com.com/html/bb/bruNS.js, Line 2, 

Since I installed Codeweaver's Crossover Plugins I can at least view these
videos using their Window's Media Player.  But I'd rather be using native Real
Player.
*** Bug 168709 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 181651 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Keywords: evang500
-> other
Assignee: momoi → other
Component: The Americas → Other
QA Contact: jonrubin → other
I was able to play today's video in Mozilla 1.7/winxp in both real 10 and
windows media player. real was scriptable and you could jumpt to sections in the
recording but wmp was not which is a known issue. 

this is fixed.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 20 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
Product: Tech Evangelism → Tech Evangelism Graveyard
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