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My-Little-Forum / mylittleforum

A simple PHP and MySQL based internet forum that displays the messages in classical threaded view (tree structure)
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Reenable video support #628

Open auge8472 opened 2 years ago

auge8472 commented 2 years ago

Nearly from the beginning of the project My Little Forum 2 there was the feature to insert videos into the entries with the BB-code [flash]. The BB-code got transformed into a HTML-element object with the mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash in the function do_bbcode_flash. Because Youtube as the main source of videos discontinued the flash support years ago we removed the Flash-support in MLF2 with version 20220508.1 (2.5.0) of My Little Forum – amongst others because no one intervened.

That causes all inserted videos in old forum instances, that had and used the Flash-support before, to be broken. Now, after the child has fallen into the well, someone stated (thread in the project forum in german language), that his forum will lose to much content with this change to be willing to upgrade. That is in general a comprehensible decision.

In the linked forum thread we discussed a few options and compared it to the solution in another software project (namely in phpBB). It is possible to reimplement the feature with generating an iframe instead an object. This is the estabished solution nowadays.

A further idea is, to provide a further BB-code for inserting videos directly with the HTML-element video. But this solution would only work with videos that are available under a static URL and which does not need the player UI from the providing source (like Youtube, Vimeo, Peertube etc.). So I'm (at the moment) not convinced, that this is worth the effort.

I would like to reintroduce this feature. I propose to reuse the BB-code [flash] with the modern transformation to a video-technique agnostic iframe. I also like the idea to have the possibility for displaying videos independently from the big video providers like Youtube and Vimeo with video. But that's another story.

Any thoughts?

streaps commented 2 years ago

An iframe embed would be nice. An additional option for plain

What I don't like is the reuse of the [flash] BB-Code. It's confusing and I guess there are users who don't know what Flash is. What about something like [media] or [video]?

I'm not against rewriting old Flash embeds to iframe embeds, if possible. I just don't think [flash] is the right name for non-Flash content.

auge8472 commented 2 years ago

What I don't like is the reuse of the [flash] BB-Code. It's confusing and I guess there are users who don't know what Flash is.

Hmm, it's an argument.

What about something like [media] or [video]?

I would tend to [media], because if and when an additional bb-code for generating a HTML-element <video> will get introduced, I would like to call it simply [video].

loesler commented 2 years ago

What is about [media=video]?

auge8472 commented 2 years ago

What is about [media=video]?

That's a valid proposal.

I am a bit indecisive how to handle the issue. Yes, the common implementation for videos nowadays is to embed it in an iframe. But in general I am able to call an arbitary URL in an iframe, not only a video or audio player from site X and Y. I don't know how we should ensure the feature not to display illegal, abusing, pornographic or copyrighted content. Handling white lists seems to be a proper solution but it can make the administration of the forum more complex. 🤔