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More => Old Versions => Media Center 16 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: Arbiter on February 24, 2011, 10:27:28 am

Title: Chromium browser engine in MC16
Post by: Arbiter on February 24, 2011, 10:27:28 am
Awesome change on using chromium engine!

I have one question/feature request. Does the implementation supports extentions? or at least userscripts? Having Grooveshark running inside mc, without those nasty ads would be totally a killer. (yes there are userscripts for that :P)
Title: Chromium browser engine in MC16
Post by: JimH on February 24, 2011, 10:31:13 am
I have one question/feature request. Does the implementation supports extentions? or at least userscripts? Having Grooveshark running inside mc, without those nasty ads would be totally a killer. (yes there are userscripts for that :P)
Thanks.  We don't yet know exactly where this leads.
Title: Re: Chromium browser engine in MC16
Post by: JimH on February 24, 2011, 10:40:10 am
If anyone reading is wondering why we've switched, please take a look at this thread (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=62332.0) which talks about the problems IE9 RC is causing.  It's a Microsoft bug, but we can't be sure they will fix it.
Title: Re: Chromium browser engine in MC16
Post by: Arbiter on February 24, 2011, 11:04:08 am
IE engine was too "slow" for my taste anyway. I've been using chrome on all my machines for months and aint switching back.

I'm glad to see jrmc switched to chrome's v8 engine. I strongly believe that it's a step to the right direction and the rendering of webpages already "feels" faster (although that can be just a placebo effect:P).
Title: Re: Chromium browser engine in MC16
Post by: Ingo on February 24, 2011, 02:29:49 pm
just a thought:

how do you plan to handle security updates? (think about long term...)

Ingo

p.s.: if you don't handle this: give us at least a "kill" switch for this part of MC
Title: Re: Chromium browser engine in MC16
Post by: Alex B on February 24, 2011, 03:29:35 pm
I think a reasonable approach would be to update the built-in Chromium code at least whenever Chromium has important security updates and then also trigger the automatic MC update, which is now triggered only when MC itself contains significant fixes or updates.

JRiver should recommend keeping the update check enabled. Alternatively the users can monitor the release threads and decide if an update is needed for security reasons. Naturally JRiver should include info about the Chromium security fixes in the change logs.

Naturally it would be easier if MS would fix IE (or provide the third party developers the means to fix the problem) and JRiver could continue to use the IE engine and let the MS updates handle the browser security issues.

I have no opinion about the possible functionality differences between IE and Chromium. I rarely use the web browser features inside MC. For instance, I have set the sites in Links Bar to open in external browser.
Title: Re: Chromium browser engine in MC16
Post by: glynor on February 25, 2011, 06:40:02 pm
I have no opinion about the possible functionality differences between IE and Chromium. I rarely use the web browser features inside MC. For instance, I have set the sites in Links Bar to open in external browser.

Can I get a link to a thread (which I'm sure exists) where I can learn how to do this?
Title: Re: Chromium browser engine in MC16
Post by: rick.ca on February 25, 2011, 08:51:07 pm
Quote
Can I get a link to a thread (which I'm sure exists) where I can learn how to do this?

Choose it as the Action parameter in the Manage Links dialog.
Title: Re: Chromium browser engine in MC16
Post by: glynor on February 26, 2011, 12:17:43 pm
Choose it as the Action parameter in the Manage Links dialog.

Thanks, Rick.  I must have been sleeping when they set that system up.  I really don't remember much about the Links setup system, and hadn't much messed with the defaults.  Looks pretty straightforward.
Title: Re: Chromium browser engine in MC16
Post by: joshhuggins on February 27, 2011, 12:21:04 pm
So how does the chrome engine play netflix? Does it use silverlight, flash or something else? Netflix's site just says it's supported and I can't find any other info than some old workarounds. Just curious. When Netflix switched to silverlight from flash it was a great improvment. Going back to something less would be a bummer.

(Edit:) Found it's using silverlight by right clicking faster to get past the MC menus while playing. Yea!
Title: Re: Chromium browser engine in MC16
Post by: Mediahome on February 28, 2011, 11:23:12 am
Using Chromium is not a viable alternative for me.  I am using an NVidia ION based PC and need the browser to take advantage of hardware acceleration.  The IE 9 beta was working great.  I was able to watch HiDef content at full screen within MC.  It is unfortunate that they introduced a glitch in the RC.  It happens with pre-release software and I would expect that it will be resolved in the final release.  At that time I really want to use IE 9 with MC. If you continue with Chromium support please give the user the option to choose the browser that they wish to use.
Title: Re: Chromium browser engine in MC16
Post by: Mr ChriZ on February 28, 2011, 11:37:29 am
Using Chromium is not a viable alternative for me.  I am using an NVidia ION based PC and need the browser to take advantage of hardware acceleration.  The IE 9 beta was working great.  I was able to watch HiDef content at full screen within MC.  It is unfortunate that they introduced a glitch in the RC.  It happens with pre-release software and I would expect that it will be resolved in the final release.  At that time I really want to use IE 9 with MC. If you continue with Chromium support please give the user the option to choose the browser that they wish to use.

Various different areas are under test for GPU Hardware acceleration in Google Chrome at the moment, so I imagine must be there to turn on with Chromium also...
However they've been a bit flakey in Chrome so possibly not ready for prime time yet - like IE9.
Title: Re: Chromium browser engine in MC16
Post by: Supersnake on February 28, 2011, 04:07:27 pm
... I have set the sites in Links Bar to open in external browser.

I went to Tools > Links > Manage Links > Action and changed one of the links to open in an external browser.
Since then I have been getting debug.log files on my desktop.  

I can't stop MC from creating desktop debug.log files despite:
(a) resetting all links to default
(b) closing and reopening MC
(c) reinstalling MC 16 over the top of MC 16

Anyone else getting debug.log files on their desktops after touching something in the Manage Links/Action sector?


Actually, I suspect the new Chromium engine. A search found it on my both machines that have MC16 installed. In my case the debug.log files are not on Desktop.

Alex, do you think that it is the Chromium engine causing the generation of the debug.log when we tweak something in the Manage Links area?
[ref: There is a debug.log thread at http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=62606.0]



Title: Re: Chromium browser engine in MC16
Post by: tunetyme on March 01, 2011, 10:48:48 am
Let me ask a dumb question. 

What is the difference between the Chromium browser and Chrome?
Title: Re: Chromium browser engine in MC16
Post by: Magic_Randy on March 01, 2011, 12:07:12 pm
Let me ask a dumb question. 

What is the difference between the Chromium browser and Chrome?

Someone can probably give a better answer, but I'll give it a try.

Chromium is not a browser. It is an engine that powers the browser. It's similar to a browser without a user interface.

Chrome is a browser. It is powered by the Chromium engine.

With MC using Chromium, it is using the same engine as Chrome, but you will notice that it is installed as part of MC. You do not need to have the Chrome browser installed.
Title: Re: Chromium browser engine in MC16
Post by: Supersnake on March 01, 2011, 12:16:36 pm
Also, the original poster wrote "Chromium browser 'engine' in MC16" to differentiate what is being used in MC.
Title: Re: Chromium browser engine in MC16
Post by: raldo on March 02, 2011, 03:13:51 am
Thanks.  We don't yet know exactly where this leads.

MC running on google TV?
Title: Re: Chromium browser engine in MC16
Post by: mojave on March 08, 2011, 12:01:38 pm
Does Chromium allow you to program the audio to route through MC's DSP chain? I don't know if that is browser specific, website specific, or a little of both. It would be nice to have Connected Media route through the DSP.
Title: Re: Chromium browser engine in MC16
Post by: mojave on March 09, 2011, 11:07:10 am
Chrome 10 (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2381661,00.asp) has now been released. They have sandboxed Flash. I assume Chromium will be updated, too. When will this be implemented in MC? Will the latest Chromium engine always be included in the most recent build?
Title: Re: Chromium browser engine in MC16
Post by: Matt on March 09, 2011, 12:00:36 pm
Does Chromium allow you to program the audio to route through MC's DSP chain? I don't know if that is browser specific, website specific, or a little of both. It would be nice to have Connected Media route through the DSP.

Not really.  Flash and Silverlight are third-party controls that have their own audio engine.

I would like to make a virtual soundcard that used the JRiver audio engine.  It's sort of a left-field idea, so no idea if it will ever really happen.

Quote
Chrome 10 has now been released. They have sandboxed Flash. I assume Chromium will be updated, too. When will this be implemented in MC? Will the latest Chromium engine always be included in the most recent build?

We are building off the Chromium tree which is newer than the public release of Chrome.

You can also use IE with newer builds if Chromium makes you nervous (although it shouldn't in my opinion).
Title: Re: Chromium browser engine in MC16
Post by: glynor on March 09, 2011, 08:34:46 pm
I would like to make a virtual soundcard that used the JRiver audio engine.  It's sort of a left-field idea, so no idea if it will ever really happen.

I've thought about that before.  That would be awesome if it was configurable in a few key ways.  It would be one way to get around the fact that you have to switch the Windows configuration around to get games to work right and still have ProLogic style surround expansion on stereo sources (the HDMI audio configuration issue).

If you ever got there, I think it could be a separate product.  If it was cheap, it would be a great little standalone utility.
Title: Re: Chromium browser engine in MC16
Post by: danrien on March 10, 2011, 06:10:43 pm
Is there any issue with using open-source code in a proprietary, paid for product?  That seems to be a little vexing to me....
Title: Re: Chromium browser engine in MC16
Post by: JimH on March 10, 2011, 06:11:32 pm
It's allowed.  It depends on the license.
Title: Re: Chromium browser engine in MC16
Post by: danrien on March 10, 2011, 09:13:59 pm
It's allowed.  It depends on the license.
;D ;D ;D