31.7.0 available

31.7.0 is now available for testing (release notes, downloads, hashes). Although there is no new functionality or Power Mac-specific changes in this release, builders will notice some moderate churn in the changesets due to Mozilla invalidating about a third of them with a purely stylistic change to JavaScript code, making this release somewhat more troublesome than it had to be. (I don't know why they bothered doing that with a branch they plan to sunset in only about two more release cycles, but I digress.) It will finalize on Monday evening Pacific time as usual.

38 is on time for a beta release in a few weeks, though I need to do some more prophylactic changes to its changesets as well for the same reason. Once the 38 beta gets off the ground, then we will begin the final exodus from Google Code.

The End of the Road for MacTubes Enabler, et al?

As Dan DeVoto reports, Google in its never-ending arms race to prevent people watching YouTube clips in convenient and less annoying ways has caused them to shut down the YouTube v2 API in favour of the v3 API, which is more complex, requires an API key, disallows downloads, and demands you to send your nubile young daughters to Eric Schmidt is the typical unnecessary API churn that occurs whenever people try to rely on a Google-based service like, you know, Google Code. (What's that, Google? My blog violates terms of service? Oh yeah? Well, I've got your terms of service RIGHT HERE.) The upshot is, virtually none of the YouTube clients for Power Macs, including MacTubes which was my personal favourite, will work anymore.

Fixing MacTubes will not be trivial. Although I have the source code for it, which the author graciously provides, it relies on the older GData framework. Unfortunately, the API is so different that it will need to be completely rewritten and some features will probably not translate. If/until that happens, the MacTubes Enabler (MTE) will no longer be supported, though the QuickTime Enabler (QTE) will still work for those YouTube videos it generally supports (it relies on a different method which Google will probably break again next week), and of course WebM still functions on YouTube if your Power Mac is fast enough and the video is available in that format.

I suppose this is a good time to mention that I've been working on a sandbox solution for "things like this" as a secret project for some time on the side. I will only say that it exists as an internal proof of concept and actually works, but I'm not offering more information until I have something releaseworthy and that's not going to happen until 38 comes out. For the time being, we appreciated all the work that went into MacTubes and its related applications, and we will be overjoyed if they are fixed, but I'd rather just find a way around Google instead of playing their stupid little games with their moving-target APIs. That is where our effort will be focused post-38.

31.7.0 is scheduled for testing availability this weekend, just in time to upgrade your mother's computer, because she loves you and misses you and wants to know why you never call.