VLC Media Player Plugin Detector




Miscellany...

There are a couple of issues with VLC detection that are worth mentioning.

First, the version numbers for the VLC player can sometimes be a bit odd. They can contain both numbers and letters. Some examples of version numbers are 0.8.6f, 0.8.6a, 0.8.6, 0.8.4a, 0.8.4, and 1.1.11. The letter appears after the 3rd number. (Not all versions have letters)
   PluginDetect will pay attention to the letters [a thru z] in the version numbers when using the getVersion() and isMinVersion() methods. For example, you could use PluginDetect.isMinVersion("VLC", "0.8.6a") if you wanted to make sure that the installed VLC plugin version is greater than or equal to 0.8.6a. You could also specify PluginDetect.isMinVersion("VLC", "0.8.6") which tells you whether the VLC plugin version is greater than or equal to 0.8.6.

And second, the ActiveX control for the VLC player is an issue for Internet Explorer 7+. When the ActiveX control is instantiated for the very first time in Internet Explorer 7+, a security message may pop up. The user will specifically have to click on the security popup and choose to allow the control to run.
   The ActiveX control is instantiated every time IE 7+ encounters the VLC player in a web page, or when PluginDetect detects the player in the browser. Either way, when the control is instantiated for the very first time, you should just choose to let it run on all websites. And then you'll never see the security popup again.
   Perhaps some day the VLC installer will add the VLC classid to the pre-approved registry key to avoid this issue.

VLC plugin versions 0.8.2 and higher are detected by PluginDetect.


3rd party media players for VLC files

When PluginDetect detects the VLC player, it tries to detect only the genuine VLC player itself. Therefore it will try to ignore any 3rd party plugin that is similar to VLC, such as the Totem player. Totem (under Linux) tries very hard to fool plugin detectors into thinking that it is the genuine VLC player. But since we wish to distinguish between VLC and 3rd party imitators, PluginDetect will filter out the Totem player when detecting VLC.



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