In the linked comment, I am lamenting that on Jerboa, you cannot easily see where the post’s link goes. When you click it, Android parses the domain name rather than filetype so the default action is to open with Jerboa. Because Jerboa cannot open the video, it just shows the instance’s home feed. The user needs to share/copy and paste the link to see the URL and deduce that it should be opened with a video player.
So please give Lemmy-hosted video links an appropriate icon (▶️/🎞/🎥 rather than ⛓️) and open them with an external app by default (the user can choose VLC or whatever) unless a built-in video player is getting implemented. Alternatively, a RIF-style pop-up would be appreciated to view the destination URL and offer actions like “Share/Copy/Go”, or even navigate to next/previous hyperlinks in comments (useful for fat-fingered users).
Doesn’t hapen like that on my phone, it opens the videos in a browser, just like any other link.
That being said, yes, a built in player would be the preferred choice.
Your phone doesn’t open feddit.de links with Jerboa automatically.
However, neither does mine and I can choose the app every time: not knowing that it’s a video link (only seeing the “open feddit.de link with…” pop-up), I chose Jerboa because I thought it led to a post or comment. A built-in video player for common servers or at least indication that the link is a video (perhaps a thumbnail with a play button, film roll stripes or camera icon, or showing the URL) would help.
Idk how it’s possible – but the URL is https://feddit.de/pictrs/image/ccb93097-3741-4b41-a8a5-5f8425f1b793.mp4 and it’s indeed a video.
Maybe the instance doesn’t check MIME types, just uploads whatever the user chooses. If that’s embeddable in any way, fine, a preview is generated, if not, hey, tough luck, here’s the link and that’s that.
And an internal image viewer…
Could you provide screenshots of apps that handle it well? Then we can discuss which option would be a good fit for Jerboa.
My initial inclination is to have an internal video player that handles the most common video formats, and then open a browser for everything else. But being able to choose a video player could be cool.
Internal viewer please, I hate external links for media (and in general having to go to an external link is a bit annoying).
I agree. That might take a while as opposed to just changing the icon to “▶” for videos, though, so I think they should do the former first because it’s not mutually exclusive.
Also, turns out Android (10, at least) gives you separate action choices for links like lemmy.ml/c/… and lemmy.ml/...mp4 so the external player is basically already implemented if you install a quick opener of internet video files like Imgur Viewer. You just don’t know when to choose which – at least for the first time – because there is no indication that the post link is a video. However, if you select “Always open with Imgur Viewer”, you are set for that particular instance.
