1904662 - www.podomatic.com - Firefox is not supported for playing podcasts

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Web Compatibility :: Site Reports, defect, P2)

Description

[Raul Bucata]

Environment:
Operating system: Windows 10
Firefox version: Firefox 127/Firefox 129.0a1

Steps to reproduce:

1. Navigate to: https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/chocom/episodes/2024-06-07T05_00_00-07_00
2. Try to play a podcast and observe

Expected Behavior:
Podcasts are played

Actual Behavior:
Browser unsupported

Notes:

• Reproduces regardless of the status of ETP
• Reproduces in Firefox Nightly, Firefox Release
• Does not reproduce in Chrome

Created from https://github.com/webcompat/web-bugs/issues/138409

Comment 1

[Jeff Muizelaar [:jrmuizel]]

Raul, I can't reproduce. Can you still?

Comment 2

[Raul Bucata]

This is still an issue for me

Comment 3

[Raul Bucata]

Attachment: Screenshot_4.png

Comment 4

[Raul Bucata]

This is still an issue for me

Comment 5

[Jeff Muizelaar [:jrmuizel]]

I can reproduce on Windows but not Mac

Comment 6

[Holger Benl [:hbenl]]

The site contains a function canPlayMediaType() to determine if the media can be played in the current browser.
That function first looks at the return value of document.createElement('audio').canPlayType("audio/mp4"), which is maybe in Firefox and in this case makes a decision based on Browser and OS, for Firefox on Windows it returns false.
With the Chrome Mask extension, I can play the podcast without problems, so the logic in canPlayMediaType() seems outdated and should be updated. We can also ship an intervention.

Comment 7

[Jeff Muizelaar [:jrmuizel]]

Here's the full function:

      canPlayMediaType: function (t) {
        if (!this.isSupported()) return !1;
        var i = e(t),
        n = this.mediaTypeForUrl(t),
        s = document.createElement('audio').canPlayType(n).replace('no', '');
        return 'probably' === s ||
        !!s &&
        (
          r.isExplorer() ? 'm4a' === i ? r.explorerVersion() >= 11 : r.explorerVersion() >= 10 : 'm4a' !== i ||
          !r.isFirefox() ||
          !r.isWindows()
        )
      }

Comment 8

[Jeff Muizelaar [:jrmuizel]]

I emailed [e-mail]

Comment 9

[Thomas Wisniewski [:twisniewski]]

I wonder if it would be worthwhile to just override the value that document.createElement('audio').canPlayType("audio/mp4") returns on Windows to probably instead of maybe? Jeff, Holger, what do you think? That would be a simple intervention which may be better than switching to their Chrome-specific page fully with a UA override.

Comment 10

[Jeff Muizelaar [:jrmuizel]]

Yeah, that might be better.

Comment 11

[Holger Benl [:hbenl]]

If we can override that value - sure, that would make the intervention much less intrusive.

Comment 12

[Jeff Muizelaar [:jrmuizel]]

Podomatic sent me a note saying that they've fixed this. I confirmed it locally.