Using the Windows Media Player Plugin

Firstly, from IRC it appears that newer versions of WMP no longer include the Netscape plugin. The stuff here seems to be just the plugin files – should come in handy. Thanks to… err, whoever told me about it on IRC. (Sorry)

Second, hacking the WMP plugin to handle types it doesn’t want to admit it can handle:

1. First, make a copy of npdsplay.dll somewhere that gets scanned. The source is in C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player by default, I think. I like to copy to %appdata%\Mozilla\plugins since that sticks around across installs (and dist/bin folders in clobber builds, whatever) and gets picked up by all Mozilly browser thingies. Hack the copy so nothing happens to the real plugin .
2. Grab resource hacker (or Visual Studio / MSDev / whatever). Look at the Version Info section. The interesting items are…
   • FileExtents is a pipe-separated list of file extensions. Not sure if it’s all that relevant… :p
   • FileOpenName seems to be a pipe-delimited list of descriptions to show in File -> Open dialog boxes. Not sure who uses plugins that way.
   • MIMEType is the key – it’s a pipe-delimited list of MIME types to accept.
   • See devedge for more interesting info.
3. So, edit the lists (try to keep the three in synch, since they’re the columns in about:plugins I think).
4. Save, and kill pluginreg.dat (in %appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox).
5. Marvel at the new updated about:plugins

Hopefully this will help someone.