As a user, I remember it exactly as the author of this article does. "Standalone player" (let alone on 'linux') is a bit of a strawman. For me it was always as easy as just opening it in my browser and it worked out of the box.

And even if this had problems as you rightly suggest, for its time the alternatives were worse. Comparing via the benefit of hindsight in 2020 isn't really relevant to the point of the article.