Instability of the RevWeb plugin for Windows

[cborn]

I'm doing some development involving the handling of audio and video files via a revlet. While it works well on the Mac, I've noticed that the RevWeb plugin for Windows seems to be a bit unstable. It frequently crashes (not the browser, just the revweb plugin) so that I have to either reload the page to reload the plugin or relaunch the entire browser.

I'm hoping to use my project in this upcoming academic term (starts in Sept). But I'm a little uncertain if I should be trusting RevWeb on Windows. Not having a cross-platform solution is a big problem, and I'd like to not have to abandon all that I've done so far.

Are there plans to update the RevWeb plugins in the near future? Is anyone else experiencing problems?

[Mark]

Hello cborn,

Yes there are many people experiencing problems with this plug-in. You should not use it for commercial projects yet. There are plans for an update.

When the browser plug-in crashes, you may need to kill the corresponding process in the task manager.

Best,

Mark

[cborn]

Mark,

Thanks for the reply. Do you know what the timing is for any planned updates?

My purposes are not commercial, but educational. Sadly, we are a little more used to dealing with buggy software. But I'm hoping that future updates to the Windows revweb will be coming along to save the day. The whole point of going web-based is for cross-platform consistency.

THank you!

carly

[FourthWorld]

Have you considered deploying a standalone that acts as a sort of "custom browser", able to download and run Rev stacks you deploy for your students?

Both a plugin and a standalone require a one-time download and install, but with a standalone you get a more robust solution without the limitations of a browser, and you can build it today.

With Rev's built-in gzip compression you may find that download times in a standalone are even shorter. Just run your stack files through the compress function before uploading them to your server, and to get them just use:

go stack (decompress(url "htttp://mydomain/mystack.rev">))

And unlike a browser, with a standalone you can cache any stacks you like to provide an offline mode if needed, so folks can use your stuff even when not connected like on the subway.

Extra bonus points: with a standalone you get Linux too, but there's currently no RevWeb plugin for that platform. It may be a minor point for some, but I'm finding that in EDU having a Linux deployment option is increasingly useful.

[Mark]

Hi Carly,

No, currently nobody knows when a new version of the plug-in will become available. Let's hope it will be before the end of this year, but it might as well take much longer.

How would a browser plug-in provide more cross-platform consistency than a standalone application? After all, it is still the same stack that you're excuting. Moreover, regardless of whether a school network administrator has to install a plug-in or a standalone, s/he has to install software one watyor another (something I know school admins often simply refuse to do).

Best regards,

Mark

[cborn]

Hi folks,

Thank you all for your comments. The plugin I'm developing is interacting with the course management system (CMS). The media plugin I have will allow the students to record audio or video from a webcam, and then that data is passed to the CMS to be submitted as part of the assignments. The assignment is then graded as usual and integrated with the rest of the material for the course. The goal is to integrate the audio/video assignments with the rest of assignments for the course, so that students (and professors) have only one place to go for their materials.

I've thought about the standalone option, and I kind of consider it a backup plan to what I've been working on. But I'd much rather keep everything all together in one interface, as integration gets more complex if the recorder is a standalone.

Thanks.

[FourthWorld]

Recorder? If that includes video you may be required to use a standalone, since it's my understanding that for security reasons externals cannot be run from the browser plugin, and video recording in Rev is currently done with an external.

[cborn]

The video recorder is working fine as a revlet. It works very well on the Mac, it's just that you don't get a realtime preview. On Windows, it works as long as the revweb plugin doesn't crash.

[FourthWorld]

How does that work without the revvideograbber external? Or are you writing a copy of that that to disk?

[cborn]

I'm including the videograbber in the stack when I export to revlet and it's loading into the revlet in the page.