Netscape Player Plug-in

The Media Player includes a plug-in for Netscape Navigator that enables embedded playback of ASF, VOD, and RV/RA content in Navigator versions 3.02 and 4.04. The Netscape Player plug-in is fully scriptable and therefore supports most of the major functionality and capabilities of the Media Player ActiveX control.

Using the plug-in you can develop embedded applications in Navigator that:

• Call the Player control’s methods to do things like controlling starting and stopping of the player,
  
  
• Set and read the Player control’s properties to obtain status and change display and content information, etc.
  
  
• Receive events from the Player control to dynamically handle script commands embedded in the ASF stream and to handle errors and custom commands.

The plug-in (npnsplay.dll) is installed automatically by the Player setup program. The plug-in has Live Connect enabled to support getting and changing properties and methods. Java classes and a JAVA peer Applet are also installed that send events to Java script in Netscape.

The plug-in also supports the following attributes for specifying the size of the control and the source file.

Important:

• Setting of all three of these attributes is required in order for proper functionality of the plug-in.
  
  
• It is recommended that the parameter -start_java be inserted at the end of the shortcut into Netscape. This loads the Java VM first, which is the preferred method.

HTML Plug-In Example

The following HTML example demonstrates how to add the Player control to a Web page so that it can be interpreted by any browser.  For more sample HTML on how to use the Netscape Player plug-in to use methods, properties, and events, please see the \Plugin directory in SDK\Samples\Client of the SDK.

The sample below is for simple embedding cases where processing events from the Player control (such as script commands) is not a requirement. This source also works correctly for Internet Explorer in addition to Netscape Navigator.

<!-- GENERIC ALL BROWSER FRIENDLY HTML FOR PLAYER V3 -->
<OBJECT ID="NSPlay" WIDTH=160 HEIGHT=128
 classid="CLSID:2179C5D3-EBFF-11CF-B6FD-0AA00B4E220"
 codebase="http://www.microsoft.com/netshow/download/en/nsdsinf.cab
 #Version=5,1,51,115"
standby="Loading Player components..."
type="application/x-oleobject">
<PARAM NAME="FileName" VALUE="http://Server/Sample.asf">
<Embed type="video/x-ms-asf-plugin"
 pluginspage="http://www.microsoft.com/netshow/download/player.htm"
          filename=" http://Server/Sample.asf"
          src=" http://Server/Sample.asf"
          Name=NSPlay
          width=290
          height=250
>
 </embed>
</OBJECT>
<br>
<a href="http://Server/Sample.asf">Start the media presentation in the stand-alone player.</a>

The sample below is for embedding and processing events from the Player control (such as script commands). This source also works correctly for Internet Explorer in addition to Netscape Navigator.

<!-- GENERIC ALL BROWSER FRIENDLY HTML FOR PLAYER V3 -->
<OBJECT ID="NSPlay" WIDTH=160 HEIGHT=128
 classid="CLSID:2179C5D3-EBFF-11CF-B6FD-0AA00B4E220"
 codebase="http://www.microsoft.com/netshow/download/en/nsdsinf.cab
 #Version=5,1,51,115"
standby="Loading Media Player components..."
type="application/x-oleobject">
<PARAM NAME="FileName" VALUE="http://Server/Sample.asf">
<Embed type="video/x-ms-asf-plugin"
 pluginspage="http://www.microsoft.com/netshow/download/player.htm"
          filename="http://Server/Sample.asf"
          src="http://Sample.asf"
          Name=NSPlay
          width=290
          height=250
>
</embed>
<!-- You only need to include the APPLET tag if you want to be able to handle script events.  Otherwise, you can remove it for a cleaner page look.  Do not set height and width less than 5; The browser will not render the page properly if you do.-->
<Applet MAYSCRIPT Code="NPDS.npDSEvtObsProxy.class" Width=5 Height=5 Name="appObs" >
</Applet>
</OBJECT>
<br>
<a href="http://Server/Sample.Asf">Start the media presentation in the stand-alone player.</a>

For additional information about the Netscape Player Plug-in please see the release notes.

The Netscape Player plug-in was developed for Microsoft by Digital Renaissance, Inc. To learn more about Digital Renaissance and its T.A.G. line of products, visit their Web site at http://www.digital-ren.com.