lyqandhh / droidfix

Fixes for issues with <video> and Android

Droidfix.js

This is a small example which provides a correction for the way the Google Android platform handles the ended and pause events relating to HTML5 video.

Default (wrong) Behavior

The Android platform, when it begins playback of a new HTML5 video, opens a new "video viewing" window that is only partially connected to the main browser window. To return to the browser window, the user must use the device's back button.

When the user performs this action, an "ended" event is fired on the video element regardless of the position of the playback when the user hit the back button. This is contrary to the spec which states the following precondition for firing the ended event:

currentTime equals the end of the media resource

A more appropriate event to fire would be a "pause" event; however, the Android device doesn't do so.

What this example does

In this example, I'm demonstrating how you can "fake" knowing whether the ended event is real or not by tracking the time index of the video. We have to store this value locally as, in addition to firing an ended event when it shouldn't, Android also resets the currentTime of the video object to 0 when exiting the player.

If it is determined that the video was paused and not ended, a custom pause event is generated and fired to trigger any handlers bound to pause. If it is determined that that the video has really ended, the list of callbacks provided will be called and sent the ended event.

Usage

Note: As it currently stands in the 0.1 state, this code provides a great example of how to get around this issue; it's not meant to be deployed as is

Two things to note about current use:

1. This really only supports a single video object as it's currently built
2. Handlers for "ended" events must be added using droidfix.addEndedListener rather than element.addEventListener("ended").

Ultimately, these issues should be resolved in a later version.

Caveats

There are a few issues, most notably that if the user scrubs back to an earlier time index in the video after having past the threshold, the video will be considered "ended" when the user pauses.

Coming Soon...ish

I want to convert this into two thing:

1. A jQuery plugin that leverages bind() and provides custom functionality
2. Part of a standalone library for handling issues with mobile video

But that will come in time; please feel free to fork and implement those things yourself and I will accept pull requests with quality code. :)