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https://github.com/dbp/dnplayer

A simple player for Democracy Now! that remembers where you are.
https://github.com/dbp/dnplayer

Last synced: 3 days ago
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A simple player for Democracy Now! that remembers where you are.

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README 

        
About

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This is a really simple video player for the news program [Democracy

Now!](http://democracynow.org). It always plays the most recent

day's show, and will remember where you are. It can synchronize this

across devices; you just have to visit the url of the player you

create at least once on each device. A demo of this is running at

[lab.dbpmail.net/dn](http://lab.dbpmail.net/dn/).



Install

-------



The backend is written with

[Ur/Web](http://www.impredicative.com/ur/), with one minor patch to

add support for different tags[1]; if you install it, and sqlite, you

should be able to build it using the Makefile. Populate the sqlite

database with `sqlite3 dn.db < dn.sql` and you should be able to start

it with `./dn.exe`. The only target in the Makefile you will need to

change is deploy, for obvious reasons. And if you don't want to depend

upon my server being up, or want to change the javascript, you might

want to host the .js file on your own, and change the script

declarations in the .urp files.



1. We need `` and `` tags. If you edit `lib/ur/basis.urs`, add these lines:



    val meta : unit -> tag [Nam = string, Content = string] head [] [] []



    val code : bodyTag boxAttrs



Compatibility

-------------



Right now, the most stable target is Chrome (on computers). It works on

iPhones/iPads and Chrome on Android, but there may be a timing bug on

slow connections. Firefox doesn't work because it doesn't support

the (proprietary) formats that DN! provides, and I haven't wired up

a Flash fallback (yes, I've tried JW Player, MediaElement, and Video.js.

All were buggy / didn't support in a browser agnostic way what I needed -

it seems that until HTML5 video/audio stabilizes, the only way is to

target browsers by hand).



Bugs

----



Sort of a decision rather than a true bug, but to simplify the problem

of certain browsers (I'm looking at you, mobile) having strange

policies about seeking (both when they allow it, and when the seeked

time is reflected in the currentTime), the backend only increases the

offset it records (unless you are starting on a new day, of course).

This means that if you seek backwards manually in the show, this will

not be reflected if you reload or open it in another browser. Since

this is most likely a real edge case (most people watch sequentially,

and if they do seek back, it is to listen to what was just played, and

won't likely switch devices / reload before they reach their old

position), and the issue of a mobile browser resetting the offset to 0

because the currentTime hasn't been updated (though it should have

been) is a big problem and something that would be noticed every time

it happened, I think this is justified. But, really, it is a bug.



Future/Todo

-----------



* Figure out a fallback for browsers that don't support MP4/MP3 (ie, firefox).