Video Player Plugin Development for Internet Explorer and Safari

We are planning to 开发者_运维技巧develop a browser plugin for IE and Safari to stream video in a proprietary video Player. We are investigating for the required technologies and various design approaches.

Could someone help by answering the following questions?

1. What are the various aspects we need to focus while designing the plugin?
2. What is the best platforms/framework available out of QtBrowserPlugin/NPAPI/XUL/firebreath and why?
3. What are the common/generic issues that might crop up during plugin lifecyle?
4. Please pass on any cookbook/pointers in this regard

Thanks and Regards Vijayanand

---

1) What are the various aspects we need to focus while designing the plugin?

Only you know your specific requirements and it depends on the plugin technology/framework you are going with - handling all possibilities would make a book, not a post.

2) What is the best platforms/framework available out of QtBrowserPlugin/NPAPI/XUL/firebreath and why?

As usual there is no single best technology:

• XUL - This is no plugin technology.
• Plain NPAPI & ActiveX - These are the basic underlying techniques that the other solutions save you from. I wouldn't do it unless you already have experience in developing with those or very specific needs. If other options fit for you i wouldn't waste my time here, especially if you need to go cross-platform.
• QtBrowserPlugin - If you already use Qt it should be a good fit, otherwise consider that Qt is quite a heavy dependency. Qts license might not be suitable (LGPL or commercial).
• FireBreath - Rather lightweight, liberal license (dual new BSD/LPGL). The build-system doesn't suit every development team. As its co-owner i might be biased though.

3) What are the common/generic issues that might crop up during plugin lifecyle?

Much confusion seems to come from the life-cycle - your plugin lives in a host-process and has to comply with its behaviour. Plugin-instances, their windows and their scriptable objects can have completely different life-spans:
Plugin instances might be re-used, their windows are not re-used, scriptable objects coming from a plugin instance might survive it, etc. ...

4) Please pass on any cookbook/pointers in this regard

Not for all possible technology choices - pick one, then ask more specific questions. If you decide to implement your plugin fully by yourself using plain NPAPI & ActiveX then at least FireBreath' source should help you clarify some things.