[cgiirc-general] Beyond browser-specific interfaces?

[Giuseppe B. <bil...@ho...>]

Hello,

CGI:IRC is really an amazing piece of software, and I've started using 
it to provide quicklinks from the fora I follow to the respective IRC 
channel.

To speed up connection, I set up the links in such a way that the 
"custom login" form is bypassed, with all settings already assigned in 
the link (nickname, channel, charset, etc ... btw, is there a way to 
set the Username?).

The one particular thing I'm doing is to bypass browser detection and 
just use interface=ie. The reason for this is that I found that this 
interface is the most complete one and it works "almost" perfectly 
also in Mozilla (SeaMonkey and Firefox) and in Opera. I haven't tested 
it in Konqueror or Safari yet, but given the speed at which these 
browsers progress I wouldn't be surprised they'll soon be able to cope 
with it without hassles.

In fact, with the limited testing I've given to the various 
interfaces, I found ie to be the one that works best with Opera and 
SeaMonkey, even better than the 'specific' ones (at least with the 
versions of the browsers I'm using, very recent even if not 
bleeding-edge).

So I was wondering if it was worth to just fix the minor glitches in 
the ie interface and give it as good for any recent browsers, and only 
use the other interfaces for the oldest versions. I think this would 
reduce maintenance cost.

Anyway, the crucial point of this email is that the biggest glitch 
I've found with the ie interface in Opera and Mozilla has been the 
sound playing. It "almost" work, in the sense that neither Opera nor 
Mozilla support the play() method for HTMLEmbedElement objects in 
JavaScript: this causes a JavaScript error that halts the script 
execution (so for example join messages are not seen).

I'm looking for a cross-platform JavaScript to play/pause/stop sounds. 

In the mean time, I suggest the ie template be updated to change

if (sound) sound.play();

into

if (sound) { if(sound.play) sound.play() }

to make the script work without fail in all browsers. Further possible
enhancements consists in adding the attribute enablejavascript="true"
to the <embed> elements, and use width=0 height=0 instead of
hidden="true".


-- 
Giuseppe "Oblomov" Bilotta

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain
a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty
nor safety." Benjamin Franklin