The last stable release of Linterna Mágica is from 2014. There are major changes in browsers in recent years that currently prevent video playback. The video URL extraction logic potentially works on most websites, but the only way to watch the video is to download it and play it outside of the browser. With the situation at hand, unfortunately most users should not be encouraged to rely on Linterna Mágica. More information is available in the text below.

Linterna Mágica has issues and limitations related to that the code is running in the same code context as the web page it examines. This is a hostile environment - a website with its own agenda, JavaScript code, and design (Cascading Style Sheets). This causes issues, ugly and complex work-arounds - Linterna Mágica not working at all, broken interface. Sometimes the entire browser used to hang because of Linterna Mágica trying to parse a web page JavaScript code as text, when that code was too big. This caused major usability issues, prevented sane work-arounds and stalled development and inclusion of new features.

The current approach, running the code in the same code context as the web page is a dead end - the work arounds for bug fixing became ugly and hard to implement at all sometimes. The code is becoming hard to maintain for the long term and it is becoming bad software design.

The user script (user code injection) approach reached the limit of its technical possibilities as I see it, for the software Linterna Mágica became and the desired direction for evolution in a software freedom respecting manner. The code must be migrated or possibly programmed from the ground up as a browser extension, which has a lot of differences technically (the main "flow/loop" of the logic) than userscripts.

Additionally in the last few years browsers are going under a lot of changes and some of the components required by Linterna Mágica were dropped out of them. For example NPAPI which allowed browsers to load external plugins, such as video players, was removed. There is video support in HTML5, but this by itself requires (major) redesign. Mozilla Firefox (and fully free software browsers based on it) had about three major extension API redesigns in a short period of time. This also led to changes in Greasemonkey (the extension loading Linterna Mágica into the browser).

Linterna Mágica needs a major redesign, but there are trade offs that depend on the approach taken. And the choices are not many. For quite some time an idea is forming how to overcome the technical obstacles and open some room for new features. With the migration of most browsers to WebExtensions as an API for extension development there seems to be a common way to find a solution.

I have ideas what might fix the issues, but they require time to study the documentation, implement, experiment and test. Currently I am on the phase of reading documentation about possible implementations. My schedule is very dynamic and I cannot always spare time. It will quite take me some time.

If you can help in any way, do not hesitate to contact me.