fx cast Extension UI showing where to chromecast, but all options are grayed out

[TimeBomb]

This is affecting both my Windows 10 machine, and a friend's Mac OS X machine, latest version of Firefox and Windows/Mac. The bridge is working fine. The API works fine - I can whitelist and cast youtube successfully through the youtube player. But this UI isn't working, all the buttons are grayed out for an unknown reason.

[hensm]

Tab/Screen casting is disabled by default, so those are greyed out. The app option is disabled because there's no initialized sender app on the current page. Tab is selected because that's the default option when the selector is launched via the menu or toolbar button, but because there's no valid selection, the cast buttons are disabled.

I really need to make this more intuitive... welcoming any suggestions.

[TimeBomb]

Ah gotcha that makes sense, thanks for the heads up and for the quick reply. I'm looking through the browser extension options and don't see a way to enable tab/screen casting. How does one go about enabling that?

[hensm]

Listed as screen mirroring. Performance may not be fantastic, though, that's why it's disabled (see #132).

[TimeBomb]

Hm I see what you're saying. Thanks for the info.

Few thoughts:

1. As a user, I think of these features as "casting a tab" and "casting my screen", rather than "mirroring my screen". So maybe something like "Enable tab & screen casting" instead of "Enable screen mirroring"?

2. Maybe a brief note in the Settings mentioning that the feature has performance issues

3. Similarly, a brief note in the Extension's Cast UI that screen and tab casting is disabled by default, and to enable it in settings. Or better yet, allow the user to click something in the cast UI that allows them to enable the feature from that window.

My current expected norm with casting is the ability to cast tabs and screens, so if it's disabled by default, the more up front information that it's disabled by default, the less confused I am as a user.

The extension's awesome btw, thanks for the hard work!

[rimrul]

How about a hint as to why an option is greyed out? Like

• This sites app (not found)
• Tab (disabled)
• Screen (disabled)

That might be enough to lead most people in the right direction.

[hensm]

@TimeBomb
Mirroring is labelled as "Screen/tab casting" and the enable option is tagged as experimental.
864cde8, fa0cf0a

Since discoverability isn't useful unless the feature is worth using, I might just remove the mirroring options from the list entirely unless it's enabled. Some sort of hint seems appropriate when there's no valid state, and not allowing disabled options to be selected initially.

[TimeBomb]

Fantastic, thanks a lot!