Vscene desktop and Chrome browser update

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Network and technology service docs

Google has now removed support for NPAPI plugins, which we relied on until recently.

The Vscene Desktop plugin has been re-designed to function in a different way and we are currently working on integrating it into our system.

We hope to have both the PC and the Mac versions avaialble soon.

Our desktop plugin can be used with IE11, Safari, Opera, and the latest Firefox versions, so we hope that most users will have access to one of these in the meantime.

You can test Vscene Desktop either by using a link you have to join a conference, or using our test system here

Revised 25 jan 2016

Vscene
Vscene Desktop
Google chrome
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Comments

0
+1 -1

Just to make you aware (if you didn't know already) that the development roadmap for Chrome will mean that the old technology behind NPAPI plugins will be completely dropped by September 2015, when Chrome 45 is released - just in time the the return of Schools, Colleges and Universities. Whilst there seems to have been no official announcements from other browser manufacturers, it is likely that they will follow suit at some point.

WebRTC would seem to be the direction of choice to enable full two way videoconferencing directly within the browser.

https://www.chromium.org/developers/npapi-deprecation

Submitted by Chris Swinney on Mon, 2015-05-11 16:05
0
+1 -1

Hi Chris,
Thank you for your comments.
We are aware of the plugin issues facing our desktop client as well as many other browser vagaries. The NPAPI issue can currently be overcome by users following these instructions:
https://community.jisc.ac.uk/library/janet-services-documentation/vscene...
We should have a new plugin which does not rely on NPAPI for release in early June.

We have been following WebRTC for some time and the picture is still very unclear for it's future. We are evaluating it, however it currently has many shortcomings and integration into the service is a factor.

We hope to be able to make more announcements in due course, when we have made some decisions about the evolution of the service and it's features.

Submitted by Paul Bonnett on Fri, 2015-05-22 12:42
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+1 -1

Hi Paul,

Is there any update with this?

"We are working to reinstate access via Chrome and hope to have a solution soon."

Submitted by Olly Pickett on Mon, 2015-11-16 13:32
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+1 -1

Hi Olly,
I am sorry to say we are still working on integrating the new 'Chrome friendly' version of the plugin into our service, so that it works reliably. We are close to having it working for PC and the Mac version should be available next month.

Submitted by Paul Bonnett on Tue, 2015-11-17 08:21
0
+1 -1

HI Olly,
The good news is we are about 2 weeks away from having a new plugin available to us, after which we need to do some integration changes and testing, so hopefully it will be introduced during the week before Easter.

To explain a little more; we had a new plugin before Christmas which worked for PC's but not for Macs. The supplier of the plugin has been working on the Mac side since then, and warned us some of the fixes could impact our integration, so to avoid having to spend money twice integrating the same fix, we decided to wait until the plugin was fully functional on both platforms before rolling it out to the community.
The delay has been far longer than anticipated however, so although this may have been a bad decision, at the time it looked like our best option.

Thanks again for your enquiry and patience with this issue.

Submitted by Paul Bonnett on Fri, 2016-03-04 08:10