268147 - real.com - Realplayer Firefox compatibility

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, defect)

Description

[David Janes]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041106 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041106 Firefox/1.0

For some reason Real aren't officially supporting Mozilla or Firefox - only
Internet Explorer. Although they claim "it works in Netscape Communicator".

When I e-mailed them they sent me a generic "increase system resources" e-mail,
but when I pressed them they sent the following statement:

------

Thanks for writing back. RealNetworks is currently working on the working of
Realplayer with Firefox and these steps were the workaround given to improve the
performance of the player with Firebox. I'm sorry to inform you that we do not
have test data regarding the working of Realplayer with Firefox.

For your convenience, here is the link that details the minimum system requirement:

Title: What are the system requirements for RealPlayer 10.5?
URL:
http://real.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/real.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=4236&p_created=1090974886

------

I have also phoned them.

There are currently two problems with RealPlayer and Firefox.

1) Bug 259922 - Realplayer 10 buttons go blank during video playback

2) When installing Firefox after RealPlayer the xpt files in
RealPlayer\Netscape6 are not copied to Mozilla Firefox\plugins, and the dll
files  in the same folder are not copied to Mozilla Firefox\components.
This causes some embedded media to fail.
QuickTime copies its missing plugins automatically without a reinstall or manual
file copy. RealPlayer doesn't.

To reproduce go to http://www.bbcnews.com and click "Watch BBC News in Video".
The video toolbar will go blank when you click on the video (Bug 259922).

Also go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio and click "Launch BBC Radio Player". It
will not work if RealPlayer was installed after Firefox.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
N/A

Comment 1

[Felix Miata]

Conforming summary to TFM item 10 at 
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tech-evangelism/site/procedures.html#file-new

Reporter, when you file a TE bug, please follow the reporting guidelines.

Comment 2

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

From the page:

"Note: Although some functions of the RealPlayer may work with Mozilla Firefox and Windows Server 2003 operating systems, neither is officially supported. We do not guarantee functionality with Mozilla Firefox or and Windows Server 2003 at this time."

Fixed? Or is this bug asking Real to officially support Firefox? The latter, IMO, is not something that is fair for us to ask, since there is a very measurable cost to doing so, but I think it's perfectly reasonable for Real to say, "This should work, but we won't help you if it doesn't."

Comment 3

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

The Mac system requirements no longer list any browser requirement at all:

http://www.real.com/realcom/player/sysreq/mac?pageid=unagi.17270606.wrapper&pageregion=A1&src=realhome_spmac_bb_0_1_1_0_0_2_0,rc_mac_rp&pcode=rn&opage=rc_mac_rp

and as far as I can tell, neither do the Windows system requirements:

http://real.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/real.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=6904&p_created=1181164692&p_sid=SlVnWM2j&p_accessibility=&p_redirect=&p_lva=4236&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MjIsMjImcF9wcm9kcz0zLDI0NSZwX2NhdHM9JnBfcHY9Mi4yNDUmcF9jdj0mcF9zZWFyY2hfdHlwZT1hbnN3ZXJzLnNlYXJjaF9ubCZwX3BhZ2U9MSZwX3NlYXJjaF90ZXh0PXN5c3RlbSByZXF1aXJlbWVudHM*&p_li=&p_prod_lvl1=3&p_prod_lvl2=245&tabName=4&p_topview=1

FIXED.