v2.25.1 RHS Panel Media Controls Vanish.

[guigirl42]

Thanks so much @zakius for your work to fix 2.25.0. So far, as best i have been able to test this morning, you really do seem to have fixed my concerns from #222; yay! 👍

Unfortunately, there seems to be a bit of a new problem, that has already happened to me several times today since the version-update. It occurs in both FF-Nightly & FF-Beta [i've not tested Release, but can later if you need]. Simply put, the media controls for audio/mp3 items, simply vanishes after some time, that is the whole RHS panel becomes blank. This prevents me interacting with the media as it is playing.

I've not actually seen the "vanishing" occur. My use-pattern is to initiate a podcast, then change to other tabs, then only return to the former tab when i need to skip some advertisements. To my shock, the first time it happened, i couldn't skip the ads because there were no controls any more. If i change to another feed, then come back to the prior one, the RHS panel is correctly populated again... but the symptom later repeats.

Sample pictures:

"Good":

"Bad":

Oh btw, it seems the vanishing does not only happen during audio-play. For instance, when i first opened up FF-Beta to double-check what is happening in FF-Nightly, after it finished synching & then loading all the new feed items [including lots of the old historical ones which SmartRSS never used to get, unlike Feedbro; so i'm really happy about this!], the RHS panel was already blank, & did not populate til i had manually changed to another feed item then changed back again.

[guigirl42]

I don't know if the following is an entirely unrelated bug, or part of this issue. Since getting 2.25.1, it's happened to me several times today that a streaming podcast was interrupted [i mean, stopped] by the auto-synch occurring. It became exasperating, so for now i have had to disable the auto-synch [aka, auto update]. Ideally, i'd like to be able to keep it on.

[zakius]

These are likely related, but it's surprising that the playback continues even when the panel disappears.
Regarding historical entries: if anything older than the oldest currently known entry appears in the feed (for example the length gets increased from 10 to 50 entries) the older ones get discarded as it happens rarely enough to just assume you already read these and deleted them and don't want to see them again (the mechanism is slightly more complex, but that's the general overview). When loading an entirely new feed without any local storage yet the whole feed gets parsed and stored.

[guigirl42]

Hi & thanks. Atm i am feeling a bit foolish, & intended to edit my OP in this Issue, but i got distracted by other matters [unrelated]. Even though the RHS pane keeps disappearing, i have now discovered that if i simply re-click on its feed-entry in the middle-column, the RHS pane instantly re-populates. In other words, whilst the vanishings are pretty off-putting, now that i have discovered this extremely simply workaround, it seems my "Issue" is easily managed. I apologise for doing inadequate testing before i raised this new Issue.

Update: No, my hoped-for "simple workaround" is ineffective, so this remains a new problem. Whilst clicking does indeed cause re-population, unfortunately it also resets the volume to full, & the playing time status back to zero [ie, the beginning]. 😢

[guigirl42]

I'm not yet 100% sure, but based on limited further testing today, it seems like

disable the auto-synch [aka, auto update]

might not only help with

streaming podcast was interrupted [i mean, stopped] by the auto-synch occurring

but also [so far; early testing] with my Issue's OP problem of

the media controls for audio/mp3 items, simply vanishes after some time, that is the whole RHS panel becomes blank

Fingers crossed i don't find any exceptions. If this does work more broadly, i'm prepared to "permanently" lose the auto update function, as a pros/cons trade-off.