This is an interesting thread. Considering non-free scripts as non-free
software comes as a shock in the first moment, because it means that if we
are to avoid non-free software we should limit ourselves to a fraction of the
world wide web. The good news is that there's something we can do to get
around this problem.
For information, these are some extensions I install on both Abrowser and
IceCat browsers:
Firebug, Greasemonkey, HTML5 Video Everywhere!, HTTPS Everywhere, NoScript,
Privacy Badger, Quick Locale Switcher, RefControl, User Agent Switcher,
YouTube Video and Audio Downloader.
In addition to this, IceCat comes with GNU LibreJS already installed, so I
the only thing I needed to install was ViewTube so I could test the first two
options on IceCat and the last one on Abrowser:
1. GNU LibreJS + GreaseMonkey + ViewTube.
2. GNU LibreJS + HTML5 Video Everywhere.
3. NoScript + GreaseMonkey + ViewTube
My impressions:
-I could watch YouTube on all options.
-Results on IceCat were confusing, at first it seemed that I could not watch
embedded YouTube videos on webpages on option 1 only, now it seems that I
cannot watch them on neither options 1 and 2.
-GNU LibreJS slows down everything.
-I can watch embedded YouTube videos on webpages on Abrowser, but I have had
a problem for a long time: audio starts sounding right away, and I cannot
stop it - I can only mute it by clicking on the loudspeaker icon shown in the
tab. If I click over the embedded video, I get it to start... and then I get
the sound twice. This problem seems unchanged with ViewTube. So far my way
to get around the problem is to mute the tab, watch other tabs until the
video ends, then unmute the tab and play the video - but only if the video is
short, if the wait is too long I have to search for it on YouTube.
-I like the small ViewTube bar shown just above the video, it causes the
video resolution to automatically change to a better one and provides other
functions.
By the way, I installed MPV too before calher warned us that "youtube-dl runs
JavaScript code from YouTube, which is nonfree".
