Chromecast Support for Firefox
hensm.github.io
hensm.github.io
However, recently it's got a lot worse. For some reason universal notifications of casting devices stopped coming up on my Pixel. That meant navigating back into the casting app, which may have lost its connection, or using the Google Home app to switch something off.
Also the fact that some content providers put annoying blocks on their apps (not just Amazon - some broadcasters in the UK prevent you from streaming live content), and all that means is you need to cast your tab/screen instead of using app-handoff (see bandwidth issues, above).
It's so close to the perfect streaming device that the ways in which it fails hurt that much more.
[1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/videostream-for-go...
If you download a video encoded differently (e.g. DivX) and then try to play it using localcast, you can get issues.
For me it's that and the printing UX. I use a printer almost every week and often open Chrome just for that purpose.
I print a lot, and I hate how Chrome does it. I use Safari (not Firefox) though.
What do you like about it?
Ctrl-P: quick print
File -> Print: Same quick print
Hamburger -> Print: Print with preview!
If you're on Windows though, man is Chrome's custom print dialog an improvement.
I'm not near my Ubuntu (bionic beaver) laptop at the moment. Hopefully the hamburger menu print option on Firefox is better there. That's often the one I'm printing from since it's for home.
If you don't want to use a third party, open the large version of the Firefox bookmarks manager (ctrl+shift+b) and make a new bookmark with URL https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto... and keyword "translate". Then you can just put the word "translate" before a URL and it will take you to Google Translate directly.
https://github.com/skorokithakis/catt/
It supports youtube-dl so you can just do `catt cast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ` and it will work.
I'll give this a shot...
It would instantly make Chromecast 10x more useful. But Google is focused with keeping it for streaming sites and browser pages only for some reason.
If they want to keep people using the stuff that has ads on it, then you have to make sure it works for every other scenario too. Otherwise people will replace it entirely.
Is there a way to setup an ad-hoc WLAN between the phone/tab/pc and the chromecast and cast downloaded content?
You should be able to re-enable them; if you want to enable them just on your phone, you can go into Settings, then the "Google" category, then "cast media controls" and then toggle the setting there. If you want to enable them for the chromecast as a whole to all phones, you can go into the Home app, click on the device, click the "settings" gear on the top right, and then toggle the "Let others control your cast media" setting.
(My roommate has a Chromecast, and I had to disable the notifications on my phone because I occasionally accidentally paused or unpaused what he was watching)
It's not so much a block as the fact that adding cast support needs explicit buy-in from the content provider and whatever else that entails since it's not some open protocol. And that's generally OK. We more or less moved from flash to standard videos. We'll, hopefully, also move from all these rubbish dongles to something sensible.
That's generally faster than using your phone.
Edit: FWIW it's a Sony TV.
as an aside I think Google home users leverage this to turn on their TV, which I think is pretty cool
According to the documentation it only supports discovery anyway so, is it abandon-ware?
Chromecast is a standard for remote controlling video and audio devices. When you play a Netflix stream on a Chromecast display, you send it a video URL that the Chromecast dongle/box/built-in device plays independently. You can then pause/stop/rewind/fast-forward it from multiple devices in your network, none of which are playing the video themselves. Chromecast is immensely more useful and practical as a result. As a small detail, Chromecast additionally supports display mirroring but that's not why so many people use it.
There are no open alternatives for Chromecast. Some Kodi remote apps create a similar experience to stream video to Kodi. But the key of Chromecast's success is not its technical sophistication, but the fact that it has been adopted by a huge number of media services in their Android/iOS client apps. The reason for this is that it's (1) built using an easily available SDK from Google and (2) Chromecast devices enforce DRM, it's not possible (anymore) to cast to uncertified third party devices.
That's my #1 gripe with it. The protocol is pretty freely available, but at the end there's a pretty strict authentication process requiring device keys stored in a secure enclave (is there a way of getting them out of there?).
One way to go would be shipping a modified version of the library not enforcing authentication, paving the way for unapproved devices (implementing the protocol is seemingly easy) - but it will likely not be adopted very widely.
Getting real Google Cast reception on your own device (I don't want to buy another hardware thing for something that is entirely software and that won't allow my custom software to run) will essentially involve breaking DRM.
Though, figuring out which devices support which codecs has been an adventure ...
Nevertheless, you'd have to ask Google why they effectively killed Miracast - it was supported in Android 4.2 and 5, then mysteriously removed in Android 6.
My old phone supported screen mirroring to my TV, I consider it a regression that my current one doesn't and I'd have to buy a dongle.
CTRL+N -> Paste -> Enter
Good to go
I can cast basically anything from my phone to my TV but not amazon prime. I need to use the Prime app on the TV.
Now it seems like they are feuding over nest like things too. Very interesting.
To be honest that was the reason for me to get a Playstation 4, so I could watch YouTube on my TV again. (And obviously for playing some games...)
Works great with everything and you have full control of the content. Add a wireless keyboard (with trackpad) and you are done.
Games? Use Geforce now.
There was also Google breaking the ability for Amazon products to receive Chromecast streams.
You can cast your entire desktop with Chromium and still use Firefox for browsing. I think it works well for anything besides heavy video streaming, because that probably requires native Firefox support that the linked project provides.
It should be possible to do a similar thing for airplay.
Someone needs to find a library that can act as a Airplay Client and then build that into an extension
A quick Google shows this list of clients:
https://github.com/jamesdlow/open-airplay/blob/master/README...
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
Native Messaging allow an Add-on to launch a native application that follows its rules. Basically, the add-on needs to ask for nativeMessaging permission, as this one does in:
https://github.com/hensm/fx_cast/blob/master/ext/src/manifes...
And the native application needs to whitelist the add-on as someone who can call them, as seen in:
https://github.com/hensm/fx_cast/blob/master/app/bin/build.j...
You can see similar setups in many of the WebExtensions that are exploring the p2p/dweb/decentralization space.
PS: I am not the author, I checked the source and knew what to look for.
I suppose this would be useful if you've only got an iPhone.
This is less about Firefox itself casting video, and more about Android providing APIs to Chromecast. It's still Google doing the casting at the Android OS level; Firefox just leverages that.
I know this is a nitpick, but it's important to understand the distinction with a closed protocol like this is that Google is the gatekeeper.
The above linked Firefox addon is: highly unstable, made through painstaking reverse engineering, and has limited support (e.g. no Youtube). It's brilliant, comendable work, but I wonder how sustainable.
Firefox for Android can support it by calling Android's Chromecast support. They can release the code for calling those libraries.
Firefox for desktop can't implement the same since the OS behind it doesn't have such support.
This project requires you to install a bridge on the OS side and an add-on for calling it. It removes the need for Chrome for the users who already use Firefox as a primary browser.