Dolphin, YouTube, Flash (almost), etc. - Nook Touch Themes and Apps

I've installed and uninstalled Dolphin many times. It has some appealing strengths but also some annoying weaknesses on the NST. Here are the three big weaknesses as I see them (you can stop reading after that if they are "deal breakers" for you):
1. Like many browsers other than Opera Mobile, Dolphin has trouble updating an existing window with new content. For reliable browsing you need to open in new tabs which, sadly, are always behind the current tab.
2. Swipe scrolling in Opera Mobile is positively spritely compared to Dolphin and most other browsers. For Dolphin you have the option of using volume controls to scroll. I have set the lower hardware buttons to the volume controls using NTTM. I don't ever use them to change pages, preferring a gentle touch on the screen edge.
3. Dolphin is a pain-in-the-*** to zoom. Double tap has no effect. Turning on pinch-zoom button in Settings is ignored. Pinch zooming does not work (even with multi-touch enabled). The only way to zoom in or out is with a gesture. Took me awhile to even understand how that was supposed to happen. I finally made a "Z" for "zoom in" and a backward "Z" for "zoom out". The stock gestures for these functions are visually meaningless (to me).
OK,so why bother with Dolphin at all? First, let me add that the new version 11 does not work well with the NST. You need something in the 10.x series (some old versions here).
Dolphin is an HTML5 browser with some limited (on the NST) Shockwave and Flash capability. With the possible Flash installation for the NST (see here, post #4), you get the ability to access some .swf files (embedded Flash players are a kind of .swf file--more on that below) and Flash 9.1x (despite the claim that you are getting 10.1. Adobe identifies it as 9.1x and various sites that reject anything below 10 also identify it as such).
I used to think no embedded Flash videos would play in Dolphin.Then I discovered that in Desktop mode it would "work" with most embedded players and you could start the videos.But you could not play them through. Although the buffer continued to fill, the video itself stopped after 10-20 seconds and the little running circle appeared in the middle of the image. You can restart in different spots, but you still only get about 10-20 seconds at a pop (examples here).
I have some short little Flash videos in a very simple swf player which I use on an educational site. I thought these did not work at all but with some fooling around in FastMode I was amazed to see that the player actually can be coaxed into working and the entire video plays (example here). Of course, everything works a little bit better in FastMode (except for display quality) but you can, if you work at it a little, coax the player into working in regular mode.
So, Dolphin can play "some" embedded Flash video. But not much.
The Desktop mode of Dolphin makes YouTube nuts. It tries switching back and forth between the mobile and desktop site and never gets anywhere. Anyway, that is not the way to go because HTML5 is a better choice--if you have a cooperative external player.
I've tried a few players. RockPlayer Lite is popular for the NST but is difficult to exit (always full screen) and seems stymied by HTML5. It does play a lot of other stuff, including some streams. I finally settled on MX Player (save yourself some time and download the the ARMv7 NEON codec at the same time because it will just send you back to the Market when you try to run it the first time). It can pinch-zoom (RockPlayer cannot) and handles HTML5 well (yes, YouTube!). I have my two lower hardware buttons assigned for long press as "back" and "menu". This provides two ways to get out of MX Player if you don't want to watch the whole video. At the normal conclusion, the player closes and you return to Dolphin. Nice.
Such a set-up works for YouTube (the mobile version),or at least for as many videos as are now HTML5-ready. Of course, you can also access any Flash videos that allow for a breakout from the embedded player. MX Player handles .flv files fine without any Adobe plugin. And it plays just about any other direct-link video you can find. Videos in the BBC News app work fine.
Daily Motion, Vimeo, My Vidster, Hulu---the list goes on---are no-go with this set-up.
But really, with no audio......If just a little audio were accessible to us mere mortals, it would be nice, but that mod is beyond my geek level
One bad thing: for some reason, the NST refuses to make MX Player (or any other player I tried) the "default". So every time you want a video you have to select MX Player from a list of hopefuls (QuickPic? Really?????). I've inspected the file where this info is stored (/data/system/packages.xml) and even cleaned it up, but to no avail.
One last warning: don't try this with Opera Mobile. As far as I can tell, one of the three Flash installations, maybe FlashLite, has a player which is invoked by some embedded videos in Opera Mobile.You touch the play triangle in the video and are rewarded with a much larger triangle. Don't touch that one! It takes you to a Flash player of some sort (you can see some control buttons if you touch the screen) with a black screen and there is no way out except for a forced shutdown.

Related

[Q] Best browser or player to view flash content

Tried cm7 and three browsers but when I try and view
http://www.interactivebrokers.com/images/flash/calculator/optionspricing.html
The experience is frustrating. Seems this content is best viewed on a non tablet, the buttons in the flash content are too small and zooming is quirky.... Any ideas on best method to view on a nook colorj
Sounds to me like the sites you are watching are optimized for the desktop. If they have a mobile version available try that. Also, make sure your browser's user agent is set as mobile or Android so it pulls up the mobile version automatically.
I personally find Dolphin HD to be the best for watching flash. Its especially good for viewing flash that is optimized for a desktop browser. It's usually easy to zoom in and control the buttons but you usually don't have to. You can just hold down on the video and a fullscreen icon appears. Just click that and the video goes to fullscreen. It also makes the controls easier to push once in fullscreen.
It's not 100% perfect though. Some sites seem to work differently than others. Some I have to zoom in and press fullscreen because if I just go to fullscreen using Dolphins icon then the screen will be slightly off center or not completely full screen. Just do what works best for the site you are viewing.
EDIT: I just tried the link you posted and it worked fine for me in Dolphin HD. I just held down on the video and selected the fullscreen option. I'm able to change slides and everything.
Hmm, weird. I tried Dolphin HD, the stock CM7 browser and Miren. They play OK to start out but then once the slide completes I was having great difficulty hitting the "next slide" arrow in all three browsers. I had to tap it many times and then the browser thought I was double tapping or select the "previous slide" arrow by accident... maybe I just need more care....
Hmmm, I am running CM7 nightly build 94 and Darlington's OC kernel. That may be why I am having no problems. What CM7 build and kernel are you running?
Runs fine on CM 7.0.3 using the 4-24-11 OC kernel. I am using Flash 10.3 and Opera w/ the desktop browser script.
abexman said:
Tried cm7 and three browsers but when I try and view
http://www.interactivebrokers.com/images/flash/calculator/optionspricing.html
The experience is frustrating. Seems this content is best viewed on a non tablet, the buttons in the flash content are too small and zooming is quirky.... Any ideas on best method to view on a nook colorj
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Easy. Use Opera Mobile (not mini).
Dolphin doesn't agree with me, skyfire changed for the worst, opera is too red for me, honestly with the flash player update released this week the stock cm7 browser doesn't lag even a bit, I find it faster and better than anything out there for anything that uses flash, just my 2 cents, keep it simple, and for fastest page rendering maxathon blows everything out of the water by far on all of the devices in my sig
Sent from cyanogen mod 7

Can't multitask in full screen mode

When I first got my Chromecast, I was able to play a video (on hulu for example) in fullscreen mode, then alt tab back to Chrome so I could still use my laptop while casting to the TV in full screen.
In the past week, it no longer works. When I alt tab, it automatically goes out of full screen mode. So now I have to have my laptop playing the video in fullscreen if I want to cast it in fullscreen to the TV.
I can't find anything in my searches about this happening to anyone else when I google the problem. Has anyone else run across this issue?
Thanks
swillard said:
When I first got my Chromecast, I was able to play a video (on hulu for example) in fullscreen mode, then alt tab back to Chrome so I could still use my laptop while casting to the TV in full screen.
In the past week, it no longer works. When I alt tab, it automatically goes out of full screen mode. So now I have to have my laptop playing the video in fullscreen if I want to cast it in fullscreen to the TV.
I can't find anything in my searches about this happening to anyone else when I google the problem. Has anyone else run across this issue?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry, it works fine for me, and I have the latest update. Maybe reinstall?
aiiee said:
Sorry, it works fine for me, and I have the latest update. Maybe reinstall?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What do I reinstall? I've reinstalled the cast extension and that didn't fix it. I have the most current version of Chrome. I can only thing to uninstall and reinstall Chrome to see if that fixes the problem.
swillard said:
What do I reinstall? I've reinstalled the cast extension and that didn't fix it. I have the most current version of Chrome. I can only thing to uninstall and reinstall Chrome to see if that fixes the problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know, I don't have the problem.
What about Flash?
swillard said:
When I first got my Chromecast, I was able to play a video (on hulu for example) in fullscreen mode, then alt tab back to Chrome so I could still use my laptop while casting to the TV in full screen.
In the past week, it no longer works. When I alt tab, it automatically goes out of full screen mode. So now I have to have my laptop playing the video in fullscreen if I want to cast it in fullscreen to the TV.
I can't find anything in my searches about this happening to anyone else when I google the problem. Has anyone else run across this issue?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My guess is this is related to the Flash Player or the player on the site that you are using. I have seen this happen on my two monitor setup where when I go to the second screen it breaks out of full screen mode on the first monitor. I'm pretty sure all i had to do was restart my machine. But I would try reinstalling Flash, clearing cache, cookies, etc.
Do you see the same behavior when you are not using Chromecast?
Good luck.
srgibbs99 said:
My guess is this is related to the Flash Player or the player on the site that you are using. I have seen this happen on my two monitor setup where when I go to the second screen it breaks out of full screen mode on the first monitor. I'm pretty sure all i had to do was restart my machine. But I would try reinstalling Flash, clearing cache, cookies, etc.
Do you see the same behavior when you are not using Chromecast?
Good luck.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It happens with any video, whether casting or not. I used to be able to watch Hulu.com in fullscreen and cast it to the tv, then I could alt tab to another tab to check FB or something. Now it doesn't work. I've tried hulu, youtube, and some other video sites and they all the the same thing. When you hit Alt they immediately go back to the small screen page. I've rebooted my computer and reinstalled the Cast extension. Wondering if I need to reinstall Chrome. It did crash one me a few times this weekend, though not in the past couple of days.
swillard said:
It happens with any video, whether casting or not. I used to be able to watch Hulu.com in fullscreen and cast it to the tv, then I could alt tab to another tab to check FB or something. Now it doesn't work. I've tried hulu, youtube, and some other video sites and they all the the same thing. When you hit Alt they immediately go back to the small screen page. I've rebooted my computer and reinstalled the Cast extension. Wondering if I need to reinstall Chrome. It did crash one me a few times this weekend, though not in the past couple of days.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have had a similar issue. I received mine on Tuesday and the first day full screen worked for espn and I was able to Alt+Tab to continue browsing. Last night, I tried to do the same thing but It would only display a picture of the tab with the embedded video (when I would go to full screen, the embedded video was black with the tab content around it. when I would exit full screen the embedded video began playing again.) Essentially, I can no longer go into full screen mode for any flash based video (tried with NFL network too). Mine did an update first thing when I turned it on yesterday. I didn't write down the original version I had nor what it updated to. My flash player also updated recently but I think that was before I tried it for the first time. I did not try to reboot my machine or reinstall flash / chrome but I did attempt to do it from 2 different computers on my network and both suffered from the same issue.
m2cool2go said:
I have had a similar issue. I received mine on Tuesday and the first day full screen worked for espn and I was able to Alt+Tab to continue browsing. Last night, I tried to do the same thing but It would only display a picture of the tab with the embedded video (when I would go to full screen, the embedded video was black with the tab content around it. when I would exit full screen the embedded video began playing again.) Essentially, I can no longer go into full screen mode for any flash based video (tried with NFL network too). Mine did an update first thing when I turned it on yesterday. I didn't write down the original version I had nor what it updated to. My flash player also updated recently but I think that was before I tried it for the first time. I did not try to reboot my machine or reinstall flash / chrome but I did attempt to do it from 2 different computers on my network and both suffered from the same issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I found a post on another forum that helped me resolve the issue. In your google chrome browser (assuming that's what you are using), type in about://plugins. Click on the Details icon (+) on the far right of the Plugins title bar. Look for Adobe flash and you probably have 2 plugins listed. Look for pepflashplayer.dll . It should be listed in the location section. Click on disable. You may need to restart the browser. Try your fullscreen again.
That fixed it for me, so I hope it fixes it for you.
I just found a pretty neat trick to do fullscreen.
Install the "Chrome Toolbox" which allows you to open flash videos by themselves, separate from anything else on that webpage.
Go to the page with the flash video you are playing. Cast that tab. Hover over the video and an icon will appear to allow you to put it on its own window. Chromecast will now only show the video, same as if you went fullscreen. Video quality seems better when the window is not minimized.
hpcolombia said:
I just found a pretty neat trick to do fullscreen.
Install the "Chrome Toolbox" which allows you to open flash videos by themselves, separate from anything else on that webpage.
Go to the page with the flash video you are playing. Cast that tab. Hover over the video and an icon will appear to allow you to put it on its own window. Chromecast will now only show the video, same as if you went fullscreen. Video quality seems better when the window is not minimized.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the tip but I can't get it to work. I have Chrome Toolbox installed, went to Hulu and cast that tab and not getting anything when I hover over the view to pop it out as a separate window.
swillard said:
Thanks for the tip but I can't get it to work. I have Chrome Toolbox installed, went to Hulu and cast that tab and not getting anything when I hover over the view to pop it out as a separate window.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i have the same problem. Cant switch tab by using alt+tab
Does anyone has another solution?
ps: i am using mac
swillard said:
Thanks for the tip but I can't get it to work. I have Chrome Toolbox installed, went to Hulu and cast that tab and not getting anything when I hover over the view to pop it out as a separate window.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's working now. Thanks for the tip. I can use this trick to cast to the TV and still use my laptop for other stuff.
Toolbox Pop-out link??
Hi guys!
Any chance of a link to the Chrome Toolbox in the app store? The one I'm looking at is probably not the one I'm looking for.
BTW, Alt-Tab is working for me, but the full-screen video is playing in the background so I can see it in place of the Windows taskbar. I can move about the desktop though
hpcolombia said:
I just found a pretty neat trick to do fullscreen.
Install the "Chrome Toolbox" which allows you to open flash videos by themselves, separate from anything else on that webpage.
Go to the page with the flash video you are playing. Cast that tab. Hover over the video and an icon will appear to allow you to put it on its own window. Chromecast will now only show the video, same as if you went fullscreen. Video quality seems better when the window is not minimized.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately Chrome Toolbox doesn't work on Windows 8? And isn't available anymore anyway?
This is really annoying. Just got Chromecast.
But when casting a tab of full screen video on certain websites and I move from the tab it reverts to its original frame.
Basically I just want to be able to play full screen content from sites like BBC's iPlayer while doing other things on the computer.
Fiddling with flash plugins doesn't seem to change it. I looked for other possibly relevant extensions in the web store but none really worked.
This seems to me a fundamental but should be pretty simple problem for Google to fix.
Any other ideas now?
Thanks, Tom
tomwood said:
Unfortunately Chrome Toolbox doesn't work on Windows 8? And isn't available anymore anyway?
This is really annoying. Just got Chromecast.
But when casting a tab of full screen video on certain websites and I move from the tab it reverts to its original frame.
Basically I just want to be able to play full screen content from sites like BBC's iPlayer while doing other things on the computer.
Fiddling with flash plugins doesn't seem to change it. I looked for other possibly relevant extensions in the web store but none really worked.
This seems to me a fundamental but should be pretty simple problem for Google to fix.
Any other ideas now?
Thanks, Tom
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not sure about Windows 8, but in 7 I am pretty sure I can hit the Windows key + D which will minimize the browser and allow me to continue what I am doing.
Obskure said:
BTW, Alt-Tab is working for me, but the full-screen video is playing in the background so I can see it in place of the Windows taskbar. I can move about the desktop though
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I like that "feature" - my old ATI TV tuner card used to have that.
tomwood said:
But when casting a tab of full screen video on certain websites and I move from the tab it reverts to its original frame.
Basically I just want to be able to play full screen content from sites like BBC's iPlayer while doing other things on the computer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It seems to depend on how the player achieves full-screen. Some sites have a full-screen option from the browser level, and that seems to behave differently (also sometimes different resolution) than using the full-screen/zoom option in the player.
Good example is www.BabyFirstTV.com
The blue-background full-screen button just full-screens the video in the tab and shows the Exit Fullscreen button when casted.
The full-screen button in the player window (bottom right corner) make the video full-desktop size (and replaces my desktop background), and doesn't show the (annoying) Exit Fullscreen button. The bottom does get cut off, likely because my desktop is 1920x1200 so I'm losing the bottom 180 pixels.
For me at least, either method allows me to Alt-Tab to another application without messing up the Chromecast playback though.
bhiga said:
It seems to depend on how the player achieves full-screen. Some sites have a full-screen option from the browser level, and that seems to behave differently (also sometimes different resolution) than using the full-screen/zoom option in the player.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, unfortunately though for me when using that browser-level full screen video, and I move from the tab, it reverts to its original frame.
I'm using Windows 8 x64 with Chrome Beta 32.
Obskure said:
Hi guys!
Any chance of a link to the Chrome Toolbox in the app store?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-cast/boadgeojelhgndaghljhdicfkmllpafd
Also found another interesting Chrome App....
Turns your Browser into a Chromecast Target that you can stream to!
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cr-cast/acmfmindblghbicdipoakcolegkcddbk
tomwood said:
Thanks, unfortunately though for me when using that browser-level full screen video, and I move from the tab, it reverts to its original frame.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you try it on www.babyfirsttv.com ? I'm guessing any browser/tab-level zoom will depend on how the site is coded.
bhiga said:
Can you try it on babyfirsttv? I'm guessing any browser/tab-level zoom will depend on how the site is coded.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, if it takes up just the tab it's ok, but when going completely full screen it doesn't stay like that if I move... And unfortunately many sites with video, like the ones I want to use, only have that option.

YouTube full screen?

I've seen several videos of people getting YouTube in full screen on their mix, how is it possible? I still got the black bezel thing on top and bottom, in full view mode? :/
No one knows?
andersj1992 said:
No one knows?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Could you link to one of those videos? As far as I know, this is not possible. You have to either download videos first, and stretch it with a videoplayer, or you can parse the youtube link through one of those download services, then paste it in a player to stream it. Not a seamless experience exactly.
People say you can use certain web browsers (like uc browser, opera etc.) to open web videos in an external player, but I can't find the option in any of them. Maybe they have removed this option in later updates. I remember I could do it long ago. Doubt it will do youtube videos anyway. You get this sense that everyone wants to force you to use their own integrated player alone.
Anyone else who can point to a browser that can open videos externally? Just regular web videos?
Morning, about youtube, I like to ear movies as well but there is the touch issues... with SONY I have a smart app able to lock the screen from un-accidental touch, did we have app alike here?
Cheers,
Work with this modded APK:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/mi-mix-2/themes/fullscreen-youtube-mi-mix-2-t3701979
You can do it without root on every video on Youtube !
Just activate the "Magnification gesture" setting and then triple tap whenever you want to "zoom in" a Youtube video,it will still crop a little part of the video to make it full screen if the ratio is not the same though.
Just install YouTube Vanced Rootless APK and the modded MicroG Google Service APK.
This gives you ad-free YouTube, background playback and full zoom to fit support.
MrColdbird said:
Just install YouTube Vanced Rootless APK and the modded MicroG Google Service APK.
This gives you ad-free YouTube, background playback and full zoom to fit support.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks man! Was using ogyoutube but this one is better.
You're welcome. This, retroarch with 2:1 ratio setting, moonlight with screen stretch setting and Netflix make for a brilliant multi purpose gaming and movie consumption device, as all of them will display content full screen.

No longer able to Save Video in Chrome

Within the last month or so I've noticed that Chrome (on my Note 9, Note 8, & S8+) will no longer allow me to save videos. I used to be able to simply press and hold on any video that's playing and select "Save Video" but that doesn't work anymore. I also noticed that the download arrow that comes from the options menu on the top right only saves .mhtml files which are useless.
Please tell me how I can save videos again in Chrome.
Thank you.
That very much depends on the site you're viewing. Some, ehm, "entertainment" sites implement code that prevents this (similar to disabling the right-click menu on PCs).
Thanks Oddbehreif for your reply. However, I'm finding all sites are handling video the same way. I've tried several different sites (where I used to be able to save videos) and I can't save from any of them anymore with Chrome.
If I use a different browser, then I CAN still save the same videos...which implies that it's something strange going on with Chrome only.
If I could get all of my 100"s of bookmarks from Chrome to load into other browsers like the Samsung stock browser then I'd be thrilled. But I can also only get a handful of my bookmarks to transfer over for some reason.

[APP][NST/G] CBSN or CBS News

App withdrawn--URL no longer valid, no working replacement
Yes, that's right, the online 24/7 news outlet of CBS News.
Well, this is just for fun, but it is interesting in its own way and was very easy to do, so I did it (cooped up for weeks.....).
Requirements
1. This is a Tasker app and has a dependency on two library files which are part of a GApps installation. If you don't have GApps or one of my other Tasker apps already, you need to copy the two files in the zip as below:
/system/etc/permissions/com.google.android.maps.xml
/system/framework/com.google.android.maps.jar
Set permissions for both files to rw-r--r-- and reboot. Without these files resident, the app will not install.
2. MX Player or some other video player capable of playing network streams. Here's a link to the appropriate MX Player version and for the custom codec package. You need both.
3. Realistically, either NoRefresh or FastMode, unless you like the flickering video effect.
4. USB Audio, unless you are really good at reading lips. I actually tried to turn on the CC for the stream, but it seems they do not CC everything anyway, so I gave up. Just for fun
Installation
Install apk as normal from a file manager or via ADB. On first run (don't forget WiFi!) it may ask what app you want to use to play the stream. On my device it gives MX Player and Opera (nope!) as options. The screenshot below shows that MX Player automatically goes to landscape (although the device remains in portrait mode) when playing the stream. This is a freeze-frame screenshot, without NoRefresh, so it looks really great (and is actually in color when you take the shot). I find that the contrast on NoRefresh has to be adjusted quite a bit on the + side from default to get something watchable, but there is a limited range of grey and it's easy to wash everything out looking for that perfect spot. My kernal doesn't support FastMode but from my memory of it I would expect a lot of ghosting.
In theory it would be possible to extend this app for general IPTV use by providing a text file containing stream URLs and creating a menu system to choose one. But I'm not that bored (or crazy) yet

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