Jump to content

Chrome Companion


techywarrior

Recommended Posts

techywarrior

I've released a new version of the MB3 Chrome Companion (Google Chrome Extension) and I hope to update it more frequently then in the past (assuming you guys have feature requests... and use it:) )

For those who have never heard of the MB3 Chrome Companion, it's a Google Chrome Extension that allows you to do some basic interaction with your MB3 server without having to load up the entire web interface.

 

Features:

  • See number of notices right in the Chrome taskbar.
  • View notices and mark as read
  • View latest news
  • See active connections
  • Restart server
  • See running tasks
  • Add video URLs to the Video Bookmark plugin

 

Great, you have me sold. Where do I download it?
Just do a search on the Google App store under extensions or use this direct link:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/media-browser-3-companion/egofcbleniceaoleohckegkeepennpcn

 

 

The newest feature in 1.5.1 is the ability to add video URLs to the Video Bookmark plugin of MB3 (if installed). If you have the Video Bookmark plugin installed you will see a new tab at the bottom of the Chrome Extension. Clicking on this tab will try and find all video URLs on the current page. You can then add the video(s) you want to the Video Bookmark plugin by clicking on the + sign and entering a name and optional image URL.

 

One of the drawbacks is that it finds ALL potential video URLs (including adverts) so I need your help to identify the advert domain names so I can automatically ignore them. For example: "ds.serving-sys.com". If you guys post here the advert URLs I'll push updates to the extension that will ignore them.

 

 

541b0f2ad8c15_mb3_screenshot.png

 

541b0f3ec6d5b_mb3_screenshot2.png

 

541b0f4bdf908_mb3_screenshot3.png

 

541b12a9ca8cb_mb3_screenshot4.png

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

techywarrior

Just seen the update and I'm not sure I like this new permission request:

 

Capture973.jpg

Can't help that. There is no way I can parse the website you are on to find the video URLs without that permission.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can't help that. There is no way I can parse the website you are on to find the video URLs without that permission.

I'll have to remove it then, as I don't want it scrapping stuff when I'm on my online banking site.

 

Not sure others will either.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

techywarrior

It doesn't do anything unless you have the video bookmark plugin installed and click on the "find videos" tab in the extension.

 

Got to love Google's messages tho. That message is for the permission "tabs". lol

Link to comment
Share on other sites

MrWebsmith

good stuff techy... re-enabled over here.. i dont use the video plugin but otherwise i love the quick access the app gives me

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It doesn't do anything unless you have the video bookmark plugin installed and click on the "find videos" tab in the extension.

 

Got to love Google's messages tho. That message is for the permission "tabs". lol

So if I had that plugin installed, it would search every page I visit looking for video URLs?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

techywarrior

So if I had that plugin installed, it would search every page I visit looking for video URLs?

Only when you click on the "find video" tab. It also doesn't "search" the text of every page. It's just a snippet of javascript that grabs the embed and video tags on the page and then passes them to the extension where I present them in the list. Also, everything happens in your browser. I'm not parsing the content on my server or even updating the advert list from a central server. There'd be much more of a security concern if the extension passed data to a central server for parsing. I'm trying to make it simple and functional. Also, by only passing the specific tags back to the extension it makes it much faster as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

techywarrior

OK, thanks Techy.

No prob Cbers. None of this would have been necessary if Google would adhere to their own APIs :( I had it working where you could simply right click on a video and the context menu would allow you to add it to the MB server but certain websites (YouTube "cough") seemed to ignore the context menu API. There are also issues in that I can't add the context menu to Flash video files so the method I decided on ended up being the best (at least for now) as far as consistency and reliability goes.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

TolkienBard

I'm getting a very odd sort of error with this Extension suddenly. I've attached a screencap of the event.

post-4053-0-34010800-1411404435_thumb.png

Edited by TolkienBard
Link to comment
Share on other sites

techywarrior

I'm getting a very odd sort of error with this Extension suddenly. I've attached a screencap of the event.

I see from the extension icon it doesn't seem to be able to connect to the server. Can you confirm that the connection details in the settings tab in the extension are correct? (since it can't connect it should immediately take you to the settings tab when you click on the chrome extension icon)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

TolkienBard

I double-checked the IP address entered and it is correct. However, I had to actually uninstall and then re-install Companion to get to that point. When I clicked on the MB Companion button, all I got was a clickable banner. Clicking on it took me to the screen seen in my first post about the issue.

 

Screen cap of what I see when I click on the MB Companion button is attached via dropbox since the image is apparently too large for the editor.

 

Screenshot%20%287%29.png?dl=0

 

 

Edited by TolkienBard
Link to comment
Share on other sites

techywarrior

Screenshot is broken/missing.

 

Ok, I have confirmed one issue. If you click on the banner without being logged in you get the error you showed before. I'll have that fixed in the next version.

 

However, I'm not sure why you don't appear to be able to login to your server. (once you fix the screenshot I'll see if I can glean any more info from it)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

TolkienBard

Screenshot7_zps42c23d3a.jpg

 

Not sure why photos have been giving me such a hard time today. Here's the screencap of what I see when I have MB Companion up and "running"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

techywarrior

Hm weird, I'll see if I can reproduce that. So, you were able to enter the server IP and port when you first loaded the extension right? And then after that you only get what is in the screenshot? Or you were never able to get the settings to even show up that asked for the IP and port?

 

I'm just trying to determine how to reproduce since I can't remember ever seeing that happen before. I thought I put in good checks for if the server connection can't be found to always prompt you for updated info.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

techywarrior

I pushed out 1.5.2 which just fixes the header link when not logged in and hopefully a fix for the issue that TolkienBard was having. The nearest I can tell is that your server IP or port is incorrect (or the connection is being blocked). If you click the icon and wait like a minute the connection attempt should timeout and give you the option to update the IP and port.

 

Let me know if that helps and you are then able connect.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

AgileHumor

Maybe this is more the Video Bookmarks...but can this plugin set play YouTube PlayLists or User Videos (latest first).

 

I really love Vice News channel, but there is no easy way to watch YouTube within WMC.

 

Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLw613M86o5o7q1cjb26MfCgdxJtshvRZ-

 

User List

http://www.youtube.com/user/vicenews

Edited by AgileHumor
Link to comment
Share on other sites

techywarrior

Maybe this is more the Video Bookmarks...but can this plugin set play YouTube PlayLists or User Videos (latest first).

 

I really love Vice News channel, but there is no easy way to watch YouTube within WMC.

 

Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLw613M86o5o7q1cjb26MfCgdxJtshvRZ-

 

User List

http://www.youtube.com/user/vicenews

Yea, that would be more for the Video Bookmarks plugin. If the plugin (or even a new plugin in the future) supports those features I can add them to the Chrome Companion.

 

I believe Youtube's API TOS prevents us from creating a full on Youtube plugin tho but you can create a thread and see if any body has better/more info about that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

TolkienBard

I pushed out 1.5.2 which just fixes the header link when not logged in and hopefully a fix for the issue that TolkienBard was having. The nearest I can tell is that your server IP or port is incorrect (or the connection is being blocked). If you click the icon and wait like a minute the connection attempt should timeout and give you the option to update the IP and port.

 

Let me know if that helps and you are then able connect.

 

 

Appreciate the fix. Everything seems to be working just peachy now. I'm not sure why it wasn't working before, I never messed with the default settings on the server or the app. But hey, I'll take it! Thanks for the dedicated work.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

jluce50

For some reason it seems to be grabbing the wrong URL for youtube videos (see screenshot). I realize the URL of the page may not be what the extension needs to grab, but the one it is grabbing gives a 404 error.

 

Also, would it be possible to automatically grab a screenshot of the video and the video title (or at least pre-populate with the page title)? The Plex (sorry!) Queue functionality does this so it should be doable...

 

54231c274ffa1_20140924_142539.jpg

Edited by jluce50
Link to comment
Share on other sites

techywarrior

For some reason it seems to be grabbing the wrong URL for youtube videos (see screenshot). I realize the URL of the page may not be what the extension needs to grab, but the one it is grabbing gives a 404 error.

 

Also, would it be possible to automatically grab a screenshot of the video and the video title (or at least pre-populate with the page title)? The Plex (sorry!) Queue functionality does this so it should be doable...

 

54231c274ffa1_20140924_142539.jpg

 

That would only work for YouTube. Since this is generic functionality I am trying to write I can't make things only work for one site. What about if you go to a page that has 5 videos on it?

 

That's also why the URL doesn't match. I'm trying to determine the actual URL of the file itself, not the page a video is on.

 

I'll investigate the particular URL you show here and see if I can determine if some parsing changes are needed for certain types of YouTube files.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

jluce50

That would only work for YouTube. Since this is generic functionality I am trying to write I can't make things only work for one site. What about if you go to a page that has 5 videos on it?

 

That's also why the URL doesn't match. I'm trying to determine the actual URL of the file itself, not the page a video is on.

 

I'll investigate the particular URL you show here and see if I can determine if some parsing changes are needed for certain types of YouTube files.

 

Makes sense. One option might be to show all the videos detected and allow the user to add the one(s) they want. Many flash video downloader plugins have this sort of behavior and it seems to work well.

Edited by jluce50
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...