Lightbox does not work in Chrome

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Robert Nash
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Lightbox does not work in Chrome

Unread post by Robert Nash »

I'm on Help & Manual 6.5.6 and exporting a project to WebHelp.
The site is being tested on a local IIS on Windows 10, 64 bit.

The project has topics with embedded MP4 videos, using the H&M menu item with the setting "Use Lightbox".

The video plays fine in the newest Firefox, though I notice that all videos are converted from MP4 on-the-fly to files like "hmfile_hash_12345.mpeg" in the top site folder.

When opening the same site in Google Chrome 96.0, the lightbox stays empty but Chrome notifies that it is downloading the abovementioned "hm.mpeg file to the download folder.

What is going on? Is there some stupid new Chrome restriction? Do I need to use a 3rd-party video toolbox?

Thank you for helping.
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Tim Green
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Re: Lightbox does not work in Chrome

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Robert,

I just checked this with Help+Manual 6 (you posted in the HM6 forum) and everything is working fine, also in Chrome. The only reason the filename is getting converted is because you had spaces or other HTML-incompatible characters in the original filename. If you use an HTML-compatible filename this won't happen. The MP4 format definitely won't be converted to anything else, and the extension also won't be changed.

Are you using a standard MP4 file with the extension .mp4, generated with the h.264 codec and an Apple profile? Don't use h.265 yet, there is not enough support for it to work everywhere.
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Robert Nash
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Re: Lightbox does not work in Chrome

Unread post by Robert Nash »

Hello Tim,
Your suggestions pointed me in the right direction:

Both browsers only behave correctly if the video and thumb files are all in the MAIN folder, and not in some subfolder! The filenames also need to be in lower case letters.

It seems the video component cannot handle filenames like "files/xzy.mp4". For PDFs I was able to use "files/xyz.pdf" however.
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Tim Green
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Re: Lightbox does not work in Chrome

Unread post by Tim Green »

Robert Nash wrote: Thu Nov 18, 2021 4:14 pm It seems the video component cannot handle filenames like "files/xzy.mp4". For PDFs I was able to use "files/xyz.pdf" however.
That is possible, because it includes and sets up the file automatically if it is in one of the folders in your project search path. :)
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Robert Nash
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Re: Lightbox does not work in Chrome

Unread post by Robert Nash »

The search paths are all set, but it still compiles to the full Windows path name, which of course is unknown to the IIS server. And the video dialog does not even allow filenames like "files/xyz.mp4".
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Tim Green
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Re: Lightbox does not work in Chrome

Unread post by Tim Green »

Robert Nash wrote: Thu Nov 18, 2021 5:16 pm And the video dialog does not even allow filenames like "files/xyz.mp4".
No, because HM needs to set up the entire video package itself, and that has to be within its own file model. It uses a flat file model for this without subfolders because it must also package the video for use in CHM files. :)
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Robert Nash
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Re: Lightbox does not work in Chrome

Unread post by Robert Nash »

Got it. It's only strange that this limitation does not apply to other files like PDFs. When I add a topic that points to a PDF in the topic frame, it can well be in a subfolder.
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Tim Green
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Re: Lightbox does not work in Chrome

Unread post by Tim Green »

Robert Nash wrote: Fri Nov 19, 2021 4:23 pm Got it. It's only strange that this limitation does not apply to other files like PDFs. When I add a topic that points to a PDF in the topic frame, it can well be in a subfolder.
A link to a PDF is only a single file link. Embedding a video in a page is much more complicated. 8)
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