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Microsoft Previews IE9 — HTML5, SVG, Fast JS
suraj.sun sends this excerpt from CNET on Microsoft's preview of IE9 in Las Vegas just now. "At its Mix 10 conference Tuesday, Microsoft gave programmers, Web developers, and the world at large a taste of things to come with its Web browser. Specifically, Microsoft released what it's calling the Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview, a prototype designed to show off the company's effort to improve how the browser deals with the Web as it exists today and, as important, to add support for new Web technologies that are coming right now. Coming in the new version is support for new Web standards including plug-in-free video; better performance with graphics, text, and JavaSript by taking advantage of modern computing hardware. One big change in the JavaScript engine Hachamovitch is proud of is its multicore support. As soon as a Web page is loaded, Chakra assigns a processing core to the task of compiling JavaScript in the background into fast code written in the native language of the computer's processor." Microsoft didn't say what codec they were using for the HTML5 video demo, but the Technologizer says it's H.264.
Of course it's H.264. That's the superior standard! And by superior I mean it allows a superior level of control over the once free and open Internet.
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
It seems that even IE beat Firefox in Javascript performance now. Firefox sure has been slacking recently. There's still road ahead though, Chrome and Opera are leading.
If the JavaScript is under a certain size, then it probably compiles so fast on modern* PCs that users won't notice.
* Meeting recommended hardware specification for Windows 7.
That's great and all, but Microsoft isn't competing with other browsers for market share, it's competing with its own older browsers. Anyone who knows anything about browsers is already using Firefox or Chrome or Opera, and anyone who knows nothing about browsers is using whatever came pre-installed on their computers:
IE6 if they're still on XP, Safari if they have a Mac, or IE 8 if they're running Windows 7.
Unless this is a mandatory upgrade to IE 8, it's not going to gain any ground.
And of course, the 30% of users still using IE6 will continue to do so until their computers die, or a techie relative replace it with Firefox.
idk just seams like it would only work better for when the java script is a certain size...
What does this even mean? Size has nothing to do with it, and how is IE supposed to "pre-compile" javascripts it fetches from the websites?
But overall compiling (quickly, and taking advantage of multi-cores) then running is a lot faster approach than running non-compiled code all the time. Especially with AJAX sites most of the javascript isn't even executed right away but when user clicks something, and then it's already compiled and fast code.
"The new software is only a framework, raw enough that it's still missing a "back" button." You can't say it isn't forward thinking if it won't let you go back.
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
I wouldnt be surprised if this is misquoted and it really means the JIT translation that the other browser engines use. But doing it on another core is a nice move, I wonder how well that affects the performance. I'd honestly have expected Apple to do that first, having a good API for doing this kind of thing.
my band is more brutal techno punk than yours
Ie? nein
Does it run on the Apple iPad? :P
OMG their technology preview isn't perfect? BURN THEM!
Meaning Microsoft controls the kinds of video IE can stream?
This is a big opportunity for Microsoft to force the Internet media standards AND generate some meaningful license fees. Those fees would be paid to Microsoft to enable streaming your hot-new-VC-backed media format. Microsoft would never have to deal with those pesky media streaming competitors they used to call partners.
If I made decisions at Microsoft, that's how I'd do it.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The demo looks good so far, but I know my MS, there is an angle. There always is. Some subtle way in which they screw it up. Royally. There must be. They have done it for over two decades. No ways after 8 major versions and several minor ones are they suddenly going to play nice.
Paranoid? It ain't paranoia if they are out to get you.
They seem to be really honest this time about following standards, admitting they are not there yet and that it is time they did... so where is the closed source proprietary crap you just know MS is going to insist on adding.
A while ago someone asked on a forum, what would it take to use a linux library for accessing MS services. And I said there was nothing they could do. No, opensourcing it wouldn't do it, because I know MS has in the past done that and then later added closed source extensions you couldn't get on anything but windows.
And before you mod me down, if Blair/Bush (in holland this doesn't apply, Bakellende is after 4 failed goverments still available for re-election) said they were sorry, they knew what they did wrong, know what to do know to fix everything and all they ask is for another chance, would you give it?
Lets face it, they knew since version 6 that they had created a beast that to this day and for years to come haunts them. And version 7 was a beast and version 8 was a beast. So, third time is a charm? This one won't be a beast? I remember when Windows 7 came out: "Oh wow, this is so good, it ain't as crappy as Vista, MS has finally got it." And now slowly the negative is getting out and SP1 is being launched in a rush to deal with all the issues that were overlooked before. IE7 and IE8 were hauled as great improvements on IE6, only for devs to then realize that they were still spending most of their time on getting sites to work with the crappy products of Microsoft.
Will IE9 be different? Will it finally have real dev tools? Will it finally respect standards? Will it finally not introduce a thousand new proprietary and conflicting features? Will it finally perform? Will it finally not have a security hole per day that goes unpatched for years? Will it finally render a page coded to standard correctly?
And will MS finally do something serious about forcing the upgrade of everyone to IE9? Like MS disabling access to all its own extra services to anyone with an obsolete browser and releasing IE9 for EVERY single windows version from 98 on so that everyone can finally switch?
I doubt it. Que the MS apologists who will claim this is finally it. They should be ready, they said it often enough before.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I had to stare at the headline for like 5 seconds before it even parsed. It just didn't seem like a reasonable configuration of words.
And Chrome ran the test in 2 seconds on an old pc; 100/100, perfect rendering and smooth. At least they're acknowledging standards :P
This should be able to serve over 2000 popunder ads per second.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
So with all of the nifty, new stuff they are finally compliant, right? I mean no more body {text-align: center;} instead of body { margin: 0px auto; } to center a fixed width layout, right?
I'm sure anyone else who needs to output HTML would love it if MS would just fix their damned browser. Then they can look at adding new features. Or better yet, just drop Trident and replace it with WebKit.
Post anonymously - For when your opinion embarrasses even you!
When did we decide it was a good idea for a browser to interrupt its own startup procedure to ask you about reopening tabs [...] When I clicked the icon, I wanted to go to a web page!
How does it know you didn't want to go to the last web page you were looking at when you closed the program?
I thought the fact that it got a 55/100 on the test meant that it failed acid.
Its not like they got 100/100 but just had that one stop in the middle and thus "ZOMG they're big liars! They cheated! It stopped in the middle! I saw it."
IE dropping below 50% market share is a big milestone for the web
Just as important is IE 6 dropping below 20 percent of total share. It's currently at 21.18%. IE 7 is still new enough to show web sites almost as intended. And unlike with IE 6 to 7, any OS that can run 7 can also run 8.
since MS will no longer hold the theoretical "majority vote" concerning web standards and web technology.
To continue the voting analogy, it takes 20 percent to force a roll-call vote in the U.S. House of Representatives or Senate.
You've missed the overall point. This isn't even alpha quality software, it's in development. They aren't claiming they passed, they are just showing that they are making progress.
What you're doing is kinda like picking on a 2 year old for not having an expansive vocabulary.
No, you've missed my point: They're excusing something that's part of the test. Nowhere else do they explain away the current score or what's missing. The text on the page seems to give the impression the pause is acceptable or 'as intended'. But it's not - it has failed ACID.
They don't claim it passed ACID3. In fact, after continuing from 39, it never gets past 55. Read the IE9 arstechnica article from a few hours ago to see their comments on ACID3, mainly that they don't put any priority on passing it but that their score is going up as they improve their standards compliance.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
3 words: Do not want IE9!
It's scoring a 55. That's a fail no matter what. You're latching on to the wrong point. The important part, which you've glossed over so neatly, is that Microsoft included that 55/100 on ACID3 as part of the actual news. They're freely admitting upfront, "hey, on this test, we're still doing badly, but we are working on improving. It's just not our focus."
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
They're not "upgrading," 9 is different from 8 which is different from 6. They're not running the same core. They're just keeping the name.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
Even if you wait, it's 55/100. But the IE9 preview page is upfront about this - it will actually tell that much before it redirects you to Acid3.
I guess that's why it's called an "early preview", eh?
To continue the voting analogy, it takes 20 percent to force a roll-call vote in the U.S. House of Representatives or Senate.
I just recently learned about that practice. It's rather disturbing to think every little detail is recorded when you go to court for a traffic ticket, but no record is kept of who voted for what in our Legislature unless 20% of them agree to allow it.
It's not surprising they rarely do roll-call. By not keeping records, they can claim to have voted in whatever manner the group they are currently speaking to finds most acceptable... a very useful tool for each and every one of them.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
I know they're not claiming they've passed. But you've assumed something pretty big: "hey are just showing that they are making progress". If they've only got to 55, and the process of reaching 55 does not fulfil the rest of the test (being smooth, namely) then it actually hasn't even got to 55. It may as well be at zero.
To be fair, you're also making a big assumption: that someone cares what you consider the score that an alpha browser achieves against a test it's not trying to pass is.
I mean, this is a site full of geek wankery, and I mean that in the most affectionate sense, but come on.
What a twat! Nuff said..
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
And honestly, I don't think that should bother us all *that much*. ACID3 was not meant to be the be-all and end-all of browser tests. It's just one tool that browser developers can use to measure their progress towards standards compliance, but compliance is the goal.
So the real issues: Are how compliant is IE? Is it making good progress towards compliance? Is it an honest attempt by Microsoft, or are they giving a shady half-measure while sabotaging the standards?
I don't know the answers to those questions, but those are the questions that I'm concerned about. The overarching concern is, does your common everyday web developer need to use a bunch of tweaks and cut out features in order to get their pages to work properly on IE, or can they simply develop their pages to standard and assume that IE will work properly?
What good is a standard embedded video tag if there is no standard coded with which to play with it?
What good is a standard embedded image tag if there is no standard coded with which to play with it? Notice that HTML's definition of the <img> element doesn't require support for any specific image format.
What happens if they cut-and-paste OS into their commercial products?
They get busted and have to release their formerly closed source product into OS.
Problem solved.
MS is visibly arrogant and arguably evil, but stupid? Nyet. Count on their legal eagles making DAMN sure the little fiasco outlined in the linked article never happens again. They may be inclined to do anything they think they can get away with, but this is something they understand they can't get away with.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Both Windows 7 and Mac OS X ship with h264 codecs preinstalled, and in the grand scheme of things, the (capped) $5M/year MPEG LA licensing fee would not really cripple Mozilla Corp (which gets $85M a year from Google for search box placement), so even if using built in h264 codecs is not an option for whatever reason, they could still ship ffmpeg.
Now let's assume they don't want to pay $5M. Even then there's an option which they deliberately declined to provide - have a plugin architecture in place which would allow third party codecs.
I'm not sure why they think Theora will win in the end, but at this point I'm fairly certain this isn't going to happen, no matter how hard Mozilla pushes Theora. With Chrome nibbling at Firefox's marketshare from one end, and IE9 offering h264 support on the other end, the lack of de facto compatible HTML5 video is a crippling disadvantage.
Please go to http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/contact.aspx and ask Microsoft to add support for Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis. They could add it to the browser, or add support for it to the OS and then have the browser support it. They can support both H.264 and Ogg if they want to. For example, there are many sites like Wikipedia which *ONLY* permit Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis for multimedia; without built-in support, IE users have trouble hearing/viewing the content.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
As a web developer, I'm really glad that every version of IE has been more standards compliant than the last.
It would be nice if the everyone magically installed FireFox or Safari or Chrome, but that doesn't seem to have happened yet.
Our best hope for killing off older versions of IE is newer versions of IE and an automatic upgrade path.
Frankly 8 doesn't seem that bad to me. Most of my code just works with IE 8. I'm really excited about HTML 5 and SVG in IE 9.
# (/.);;
- : float -> float -> float =
I know this is going to sound trollish, but hear me out.
I can't be the only one noticing that there is a recent upswing in what I'd call Microsoft "prototype news." All the blogs are full of Win Mobile 7 System Phone (or whatever they are calling it...), something called Courier that's probably vaporware, Natal, and now IE enhancements that aren't quite done yet. It feels to me like Microsoft shifted a good chunk of change into marketing for some reason.
It kind of feels like they are saying "Oh, don't look at that, we'll have something soon..."
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Does it run Linux?
Hello,
I wonder why using H.264 is such a big fuss in Opera and Firefox.
- modern operating systems have embedded H.264 codecs in it (through Direct Show API on Windows and through Quicktime on Mackintosh).
- more and more video GPU are embedding an H.264 decoder nowadays.
So apart from the "philosofic" approach, one could take advantage of these available H.264 decoders to perform video playback and decoding without having to pay any fee or breaking any licence. What remains to be agreed upon in the container file format. MP4 / 3GPP are covered by patents. I can support MPEG-LA for licencing codecs but I never understood anybody patenting a file format. Where is the innovation in a file format?
I my view, everybody should have H.264 as baseline for video (this does not exclude the support for Theora) and agree on a patent free file format or at least advocate the gvt to have these format freed from their patents.
Just to put things in perspective:
My test on Firefox actually stuttered a bit but that could be resource load on my computer. Of course, Firefox's 92/100 is still a fail according to Acid3.
When you consider IE8's score I'd say that they're making good progress.
No, everyone is NOT on board. For example, Wikipedia explicitly forbids MP3 and H.264, and only accepts Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis. If you want to hear audio or see videos on Wikipedia, one of the world's most popular web services, then you MUST use Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis. And as you know, Firefox (one of the most popular web browsers and growing) includes built-in support for Ogg and NOT for H.264. Many sites, and many operating systems (such as Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Debian, etc.) do NOT support H.264.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
wouldn't compiling THEN running the java script be overall slower because of it not being pre compiled?
If there were loops involved then compiling the loop once would be faster than interpreting loop each time. Also, a lot of Javascript runs in response to events. In those cases the compile time would likely be over before the event was triggered.
The lowest common denominator just moved up a pretty big notch, hooray!
Why yes I am a web developer, how did you guess?
And a good answer to your question (is sadly another question): How do you comprehensively test compliance?
Last i heard, it was by using exhaustive test suites. The kind of thing that all of the major browser makers should (and for most of them, have afaik) been contributing to. Including Microsoft. This drives clarity of the spec (ie, what to do in edge cases it doesn't specify, or the border between SVG and DOM, or whatever that physics ball test was showing, for instance) and it lets everyone meet the same standard in the same way.
I'm just glad that they (all of them, not just MS) appear to be more or less doing it right, this time.
And yeah, i'm no big fan of ACID3 either. I was hoping ie9 would knock it out of the park, just to stomp on some friends i know who treat it like some kind of holy grail, but one single test is far too hard to cheat at. you need a test suite, not 100 edge cases.
MS also announced demos of IE10, IE11 and IE12.
"A new release every month! That's our goal!" said sweaty, vaguely simian MS CEO Steve Ballmer. The new Hachamovitch Javascript engine will interface with the Millajovovich subsystem to spawn independent processes to more effectively deliver those animated ads everyone loves!"
"Like that punch the monkey ad! I love that one!" Ballmer said and began his patented monkey dance. "C'mon everyone! Punch the monkey!"
When asked about MS simply adopting WebKit and making everyone's life easier and even saving themselves piles of money, Ballmer pulled out a shotgun and killed the reporter.
"Oops! Thought he was zombie," said Ballmer and shot the reporter's body again. "Double tap!"
No, not even slightly true. The primary reason that PNG was created was to create a patent-free format. Then, since they were creating a format anyway, they decided to make other improvements. For more information, see "History of the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) Format" by Greg Roelofs, which was published by the Linux Gazette and later the Linux Journal. I know, this is Slashdot, I'm not allowed to cite sources :-).
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
They're freely admitting upfront, "hey, on this test, we're still doing badly, but we are working on improving. It's just not our focus."
Why should ACID3 be their focus? And even so, when did they mention it's not?
I think Microsoft working towards better ACID3 compliance is great news.
For a product the size of IE to make the changes needed to go from 22 to 55 in just a few months is incredible. This is regardless of who's working on it and I hope they get closer to 100% before IE9 is released.
I really don't get. HTML5 support, CSS3 and better Javascript performance and most of the posts on here are still complaining.
Personally, I'm just happy one more major browser is aggressively ( the standards haven't been ratified yet and are subject to change ) pursuing web standards.
IE8 already has a bunch of adblock extensions, why wouldn't IE9?
Acid3 is one test some people use to measure a Web browser platform's compliance with some Web standards.
In other word Not Micro$ofts Web standards...
I think this would all be much more telling if Microsoft made a statement of their intentions to meet W3C standards. We all know they have no such intention. The perception that "everyone else is broken" while MSIE, the market leader, is flawless.
So when I uninstall Mozilla/Netscape 9 this weekend, can I uninstall Mozilla/Firefox too? Is it heading towards the same grave?
Nah.
SIG:
I use Mosaic because it makes me feel like 1993.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
It's the newest version of the Microsoft's web browser, also known as Internet Explorer. However, due to the increased Internet standards compliance and for marketing reasons, the successor to Internet Explorer 8 (IE 8) won't be called Internet Explorer 9 (IE 9), but rather Internet-Compliant Explorer 9.
Ezekiel 23:20
It's not that they think Theora will win in the end. It's that they want some free standard to win in the end, and they know that won't happen if they (of all people) fold on H.264.
The money they'd have to pay for including it in their distribution isn't the issue. It's the fees people in future would have to pay for creating and distributing movies. They want the Web to be democratic, and that means everyone gets to contribute, whatever their financial means.
Can't handle Internet Explorer (= Most popular browser) = time to think about droping the whole web developer idea?
You don't get it. If Firefox had h.264 support, it could not be redistributed. Period. Everyone would have to download the 'offical' version from Mozilla. No Linux distro could include it. No one could change the code and distribute it. It would cripple Firefox. Why the hell doesn't anyone understand this?
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
IE9 won't have Adblock, so who cares?
Or Flashblock.
As long as it continues to support Active-X, I have no use for it.
Oh, how so? Outside US, that is?
Ezekiel 23:20
Mozilla's decision is no more "political" than the proprietors decision to go with other codecs that cannot be freely redistributed everywhere. The effect of those politics on user's freedom is what is important and how these situations differ.
Digital Citizen
Actually, most parliamentary bodies try to avoid roll-call votes if possible simply because they're so time-consuming. There's really no point in doing a roll call vote unless it's going to be close; when something's going to pass with an 81% majority anyways, surely that efficiency is worth something?
Hardware accelerated SVG is pretty big. Qt does this and KDE uses it, but I believe that's a first in any web browser.
Homogenisation leads to stagnation, even when it's not Microsoft driving it.
People need to realise that it's a *bad* thing if everyone's using Firefox or all the browsers are using webkit as their rendering engine or everyone's running AMD processors. Variety provides competition, which results in progress.
See here: http://www.ie7pro.com
If you don't want Active-X, disabled it.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
You don't get it. If Firefox had h.264 support, it could not be redistributed. Period. Everyone would have to download the 'offical' version from Mozilla. No Linux distro could include it. No one could change the code and distribute it. It would cripple Firefox. Why the hell doesn't anyone understand this?
Because I would be violating the "cognition" patents if I tried.
Ubuntu doesn't seem to have a problem redistributing H.264 support in libavcodec.
On Linux, Opera 10.50 and Chrome 5 dev look the same to me on the Acid 3 test
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
They obviously could modify and redistribute Firefox, they would simply face a choice between licensing the same patents or removing the ability to play h.264 (and thus relying implicitly on Flash which isn't going anywhere)
In practice, there aren't many (any?) successful forks of Firefox. It wouldn't exactly cause problems for millions of people. And if some new fork did come along, then by the time the organization behind it reached the "millions of users" stage they'd already need funding anyway.
FFMpeg is LGPL/GPL. The royalty per copy of the H.264 codec conflicts with the freedoms the GPL gives you to freely make copies of the software.
Dilbert RSS feed
This probably goes without saying, but the IE9 preview does not install on Windows XP.
You don't get it. If Firefox had h.264 support, it could not be redistributed. Period. Everyone would have to download the 'offical' version from Mozilla. No Linux distro could include it. No one could change the code and distribute it. It would cripple Firefox. Why the hell doesn't anyone understand this?
That's not true. h.264 can be implemented as a plugin. Firefox needn't include this plugin by default. There are plenty of third-party h.264 implementations to choose from. Mozilla themselves could even create such a plugin as an add-on, and make it freely available (sans source, if necessary).
Mozilla are shooting themselves in the foot if their present stance is anything but bluster. The h.264 train is leaving the station, and Apple, Google, and even Microsoft are on board. Firefox's market share will plummet without an h.264 solution.
Mod. Parent. Up.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
Of course they will support (most probably) only H.264. Microsoft is one of those in patent pool of MPEG-LA for AVC.
Have you used them?
I realize I can disable it. I want people to stop coding web apps with it. What is the point of making a web app that is tied to one platform?
Okay so they use the browser to tap other resources for more power to inflate the speed of the browser. And this is a good thing? Give me a more efficient browser that's leaner and meaner. IE9 tapping more CPU and GPU power is like saying, "By multiplying the number of engines in this school bus we were eventually able to match speeds of those normally associated with sports cars."
If you look back to when IE 8 was being developed, the Acid 3 score barely changed between preview releases and final scores. So I think this time it will be the same and 55 is around what we can expect in IE 9 final. So once again IE is not standards compliant (unless the submitted tests are accepted).
That said, I installed the preview and ran the test "Flying Images" and I was genuinely impressed. I hope that 2D performance comes to Firefox soon. The difference is astonishing especially when you increase the number of objects.
I haven't used a website that required an ActiveX control in probably 5 years. What decade are you living in?
I've used one, which seemed to work as advertised. But, since IE isn't my primary browser, I didn't use it for any significant amount of time, so I'm not in a position to judge on its quality vs AdBlock and other well-known options.
Firefox already has support for these in the 3.7 prerelease builds. All of the IE9 tests that showcase the benefits of these two API's worked amazingly on my D2D+DW enabled Firefox, while Chrome fell flat. If you're interested in enabling it then see this: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1775755
Why the hell doesn't anyone understand this?
Because it's false.
Firefox needs only to ship with generic gstreamer support for it's video element, just as Fennec will be doing. Then you can install any damn gstreamer codec implementation you want, and it'll be available to Firefox. Problem is, the Firefox devs decided they don't want to do that for political reasons, and so Fennec's implementation won't be ported to Firefox. Thank you asshole developers!
That is what plugins are for, they should of created a rock-stable plugin API instead of trying to take the features of dozens of plugins and worry about getting them all working together.
Make a light weight browser that has no plugins at all.
Make one that has the plugin API and no plugins.
Make one that has the top 10/20/30 plugins.
Let everyone else use specialized browsers like flock if they have to.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
It could be worse. The name could be Internet-Complaint Explorer 9, but that would be redundant.
Try using an SVG as a background-image, for example.
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
Why can't they just support the codecs installed on the system?
Kiteboarding Gear Mention slashdot and get 10% off!
Like prior IE releases they're still playing catchup and not moving ahead of the competition. Webkit & Mozilla have support border-radius for quite some time now and Opera, I believe, has also started to supported it. Then there's SVG which the others have supported for a very long time now.
This is no different than when IE8 was released and IE finally supported CSS 2.1 when all the other browser vendors had.
Webkit, specifically Safari, has been leading the way in CSS innovation & Javascript performance with each release with Chrome slightly behind. Firefox & Opera seem to be battling it out for third place and IE, of course is always an entire generation behind.
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
'Works as advertised'
Advertising for ad-blockers ? Why not. :-)
New things are always on the horizon
It all depends on what the patent holders will do with H.264. I think they decide by year if people should pay up.
Also Google has renewed it's deal with Mozilla until 2012 starts, no one knows what will happen after that.
New things are always on the horizon
Google could release V8, as Google bought On2. After all Theora is based on V5 which was released to the open source community by On2 as well.
New things are always on the horizon
Or they could just use the operating system's decoder. This is purely Mozilla trying to influence a market to choose the harder option when the market really doesn't give 2 shits about it.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
With all the idiots fighting over the usual crap no one mentioned that it doesn't seem to support the canvas element. Microsoft has specifically tried to get the canvas element removed from the HTML5 spec. (as per here). And I know why Microsoft doesn't want the canvas element in there: because it's a direct threat to Silverlight.
He may have some corporate intranet app that the company has no intention of updating, which in term has caused them to be stuck on the (ancient) IE6. So, I guess he is probably in last decade.
SSC
...when it is being built right into HTML?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Actually, you are part right. It's the web portal for our payroll system. It's not that it's old, it's that our business office backend is Great Plains, which is a Microsoft product. So naturally getting web apps to tie into it and be platform independent is tough.
MS is visibly arrogant and arguably evil, but stupid? Nyet. Count on their legal eagles making DAMN sure the little fiasco outlined in the linked article never happens again. They may be inclined to do anything they think they can get away with, but this is something they understand they can't get away with.
Right, because MS never does the same illegal thing twice... (or more. You forgot about Stac). Well, let's just say this seems to be habitual with MS. They may have kicked the habit, but they no longer deserve the benefit of the doubt.
Nonsense.
First of all, Microsoft does *not* have "nothing to worry about" with H.264. Just because it pays tribute (er, licenses patents) from one organization does *NOT* mean that it's protected from all other organizations. In fact, once you demonstrate that you're willing to pay to one organization, others will start to show up to get some money too. For an analogy, look at the history of the Vikings; once people started paying tribute, the odds of looting parties showing up INCREASED. And we don't have to just use analogies; look at the recent history of sound codecs, specifically MP3. Microsoft paid big$ tribute for MP3, but Alcatel-Lucent sued Microsoft and won a record-breaking $1.52 billion in damages via a jury verdict. Now it's true that Microsoft got lucky in that one; in the MP3 case, a judge reversed the jury, a highly unusual event. If a judge hadn't reversed it, Microsoft would have paid $1.52 billion in additional damages for something it had ALREADY PAID LICENSE FEES for. And even so, Microsoft spent a FORTUNE in court on MP3, a codec that it was already paying license fees for. So it appears that "licensed" codecs have a HIGHER risk, not a lower risk, historically speaking. Wikipedia has more about the MP3 patent stuff.
Second of all, there's already been a lot of money and research spent to make sure that Ogg Theora is free of patent issues. Few things in life are "conclusively proven"; let's use realistic measures. The evidence, in this case, is really strong that Ogg is safe. Strictly speaking, it's not that Ogg Theora is patent-free, it's that all known required patents have been released under and irrevocable free license. That is actually a stronger legal position than simply "not knowing of any patents"... here we have a granted patent, which is then released. The Ogg folks spent $ to do their own legal searches, too, something standards bodies emphatically do NOT do, giving you additional protection. Most companies that claim that "Ogg has unknown patent issues" are basically flinging FUD; it's mainly a protest claimed by companies who have a vested interest (a kickback) from the patent licenses. In particular, it's my understanding that Apple *makes* money from the H.264 patents. So unsurprisingly, Apple works to lock everyone else into the patents they partly control, and actively works to *prevent* the use of open standards for codecs. But you don't need to buy into that.
Sure, it's always possible that there are unknown submarine patents, but submarine patents are risk to all codecs, including H.264; that is not specifically a risk to Ogg Theora. Indeed, H.264 is MORE dangerous. Because H.264 was developed in an environment where patents were permitted (for shame, ISO), and there was no *requirement* for an external patent search (ISO doesn't require it), there was an incentive to patent everything, both by the participating parties and by external parties. There have been a number of court cases about MP3, but none about Vorbis, which shows that once you let patents into a standards process, things can get really bad.
Someday, someone may find a patent problem with Ogg Theora, but this is highly unlikely. In contrast, we have hideous patent problems with H.264, today. Why worry about Ogg, when there's a wolf already in tent? We need to dump H.264 (with its KNOWN problems) and switch to Ogg (which has NO known problems). First step: Get the browsers to support Ogg Theora. Then websites can more rationally use the format. It's better for Microsoft's customers: They can then easily use an open standard. It's also better for Microsoft: If more people use an open standard, they won't be as beholden to the H.264 licensors and will reduce the risk of me-too lawsuits like that of Alcatel-Lucent.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
no xp support.
Er, no. The only Apple API you could be referring to that I can think of would be libdispatch. And libdispatch is NOT especially suited for running a single task on a single core. That's exactly the kind of thing traditional threading libraries (such as pthreads, or Windows threads) are good at. libdispatch is more for background batch processing.
No MathML? No Ogg? Only works on Vista or newer? And look at the SVG "doesn't implement" list... what it DOESN'T do is rather painful.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
I think is better to create a new and decent browser-based script language than try to run faster the actual javascript...
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
They can't pay, as the moment they do no one can redistribute their code. The money is not the problem, freedom is.
iceweasel is one. Default browser on debian.
That would mean firefox would be non-free. They do not want to be non-free.
why isn't it simply being done electronically?
And what do you propose ?
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
IE is one of the few Microsoft products that is actually worth exactly what the customers pay for it!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Explain, if you can.
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
Google's not a charity - they aren't about "free and open", they're about control. Like all the rest.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
I can (and do) install Chrome on my Ubuntu workstations. They pay a flat licensing fee to MPEG LA, so it doesn't matter how many installs of Chrome are out in the wild, and whether it gets redistributed.
Iceweasel isn't a fork. Iceweasel exists only because distributing Firefox with Debian requires a couple of modifications to it (apparently) and Mozilla will not allow them to use the "Firefox" registered trademark for an even minimally modified copy. So they have to remove "Firefox" from everywhere it is. Not a fork by any means.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
They don't work. A friend of mine went and reviewed all the 'popular' browsers, down to Opera, and found that none of the adblockers work even close to as well as the one for Firefox. All these extra features, faster speed, whatever, don't equate to a better browsing experience when the Internet is full of ads.
H.264 is not an open standard. H.264 is a standard, but being a standard doesn't make it open, in the same sense that being a door doesn't make it open :-).
There are
several definitions of "open standard", and patent-encumbered standards like H.264 fail nearly all of them:
We don't need a new "digital divide". The web should be inclusive, not exclusive. The creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, said: "The decision to make the Web an open system was necessary for it to be universal. You can't propose that something be a universal space and at the same time keep control of it."
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Thats their choice. They also keep choosing to bloat up the browser.
They should bloat up the browser with gstreamer support, but they wont, because that would finally be bloat that makes sense for the end user.
"His name was James Damore."
Will the new version of IE still have the compability view in it?
A web app that is being used at a clients site requires separate sessions and my fear is that the compability vew which is the one thing that has saved us in IE8 will actually disappear in future versions. Anyone have information about that?
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
I wonder how high the compliance level of HTML 5.0 that Internet Explorer 9.0 conform to. If it can actually run Google Wave natively, then that would be quite an achievement, since Google Wave has to potential to be a really awesome collaborative tool, especially if you don't need to load an extra browser to run it.
iceweasel is one. Default browser on debian.
The purpose of that is to remove the copyrighted artwork and trademarked name to comply with the Debian Free Software Guidelines... If Firefox added support for a patented codec, they could remove that too.
Here I sit, all broken hearted.
Came to poop, but only farted.
Well, I find Opera built-in adblock to be perfectly adequate to my needs, which may explain the difference in perception.
Can someone please explain to me what Microsoft has to gain by dumping more and more money into Trident?
Why don't they just adopt WebKit, and add ActiveX support to it?
The ones on the preview page. From what I understood, MS was saying that JS performance is not the entire story for Browser performance, and a couple of their tests make it abundantly clear. I ran the "Flying images" test, and IE whipped chrome by rendering the animation about 20 times faster, even when I increased the number of objects to ridiculous amounts.
It doesn't matter how fast your Javascript engine is if your renderer is old and busted. A faster renderer should improve page load times as well as animations. It'll be interesting to see some of the real-world based tests on this new engine.
If they're having enough votes where the record-keeping is becoming that burdensome, where they're trying to seal the leaks in the boat of laws with band-aids, there's something fundamentally wrong with their nation-state.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
Problem is, the Firefox devs decided they don't want to do that for political reasons, and so Fennec's implementation won't be ported to Firefox. Thank you asshole developers!
I rather suspect they decided to not do that *right now* for political reasons.
Right now html5 video is not widespread, and their purpose is still chewing at the IE marketshare. If the world embraces html5 video overnight and everybody and their dog switches to Chrome because of its h264 support, you can be damn sure they'll fold. The same if IE9 comes out with html5 support.
Right now they have nothing to worry about (except maybe inconveniencing some foul-mouthed slashdot poster that can't be bothered to search for solutions, e.g. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/83149/ ).
So as long as there's no real threat of pushing Firefox towards irrelevance, *now* is the right time to make a stand and raise awareness about how detrimental patents are to free software. Thank you, developers with a backbone!
I rather suspect they decided to not do that *right now* for political reasons.
That's what I said. I don't give a crap if, in some hypothetical future, the Firefox devs suddenly realize that maybe user needs should actually trump ridiculous political posturing. The point is that now, today, there is a perfectly valid, legal, reasonable solution for supporting *any* codec in an HTML5 video element (well, any codec supported by gstreamer), but they're choosing not to implement it for strictly ideological reasons.
Right now they have nothing to worry about (except maybe inconveniencing some foul-mouthed slashdot poster that can't be bothered to search for solutions, e.g. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/83149/ ).
Uh, that's not a solution. Hell, did you even read the description of the addon? All it does is s/<video>/<embed>/. That's it. You lose all the integrated DOM support, video overlays, and all the other crap that makes the video element superior to straight object embedding.
*now* is the right time to make a stand and raise awareness about how detrimental patents are to free software.
Please, that's garbage. The battle is lost. It's been lost ever since Flash moved to H.264, and probably long before then. This little fight Firefox is putting up is pointless, and in the end, it's the users that will lose out.
Really? libavcodec is installed by default now?
This is a perfect example of one of those well written, but stupid comments that ever so frequently get modded up.
Touché
I can appreciate that you think of yourself as a pragmatist, but you are, in fact, an adherent of feudalism.
My promoting of h.264 is neither a pragmatic decision, nor a feudalistic decision. Pragmatic would be if I chose the inferior codec for some reason of expediency. Feudalism would be if I chose h.264 because of the fact that it's proprietary. Neither is the case.
The web works and is successful because all of the most important parts of it can be implemented on a royalty-free basis.
If the MPEG-LA ever decides to make onerous the licensing of h.264, the sites that can pay will pay, and those that can't will either just continue without paying, or switch to something like Theora. In either case, I get to use the superior codec today (and in the future), and a free, but inferior, one in the future, if the need arises.
What I *don't* promote, is to forgo the superior solution because of ideology. It doesn't help that Mozilla and their supporters are lying about the effects that h.264 will have on the Internet.
Theora works today and will only improve with time. I'd speculate and even consider it likely that VP8 will also join the open, royalty-free fold courtesy of Google.
So we should promote Theora because Google might release an open source codec of their own?
With some exceptions (exclusivity deals on Google Maps content!), Google hasn't so far played the overly controlling game.
They've fairly consistently played the "grow the pie for everyone" game.
This is a big day for web developers and the www as a whole! Something I didn’t think would ever happen.
Of course we still have to check if they added deliberate incompatibilities to do their dirty EEE work. (If they don’t, I will not not acknowledge their work, just because it’s MS.)
But apart from that, this will finally mean full steam ahead for all the cool new features!
Remember that without the Mozilla team, and Firefox, this would never have happened. Ever!
So thank you, thank you, thank you, every single one who worked to make Firefox so frightening that it woke the big dinosaur!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
You don’t get it! It does not have to include any video codec AT ALL.
Under Linux, the package could simply have a dependency on ffmpeg, and on Windows/OSX, it could use the system codec facility (DirectMedia and CoreVideo).
There. Done. Plays EVERYTHING you throw at it. No license problems. Finito.
But fundamentalist idiots like you seem to deliberately ignore this, so their twisted reality doesn’t fall apart like a house of cards.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
No. They only get busted, if someone finds it!
Cheating in school also isn’t the problem. Getting busted is!
Indeed evolutionary, there are many animals whose very successful strategy, is to cheat trough life.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
People outside of Slashdot don't like switching browsers. If the world embraces HTML 5 video overnight and everybody and their dog switches to Chrome because of its h264 support, it's already too late. They've lost, and they're at the precipace of irrelevance from which they will likely only recover if there's also something horribly wrong, from the user's perspective, with Chrome. And even in that situation they're not necessarily going to be the beneficiary of such a problem. IE might be, or Opera, or some browser nobody's heard of or that doesn't even exist today.
If they're playing a game of brinkmanship, it's a dangerous game. If they take it too far they're done, and they won't be able to raise awareness about ANY of the issues they care about. Patents are important, but I'm not sure H264 is the issue to push it on. It's already in widespread use, it's a quality codec, people are used to and seem to like the results (even if they don't understand what's going on in the background).
It's their product, of course; it's their company. I think it's a dangerous move with no hope of a positive outcome.
Well, hopefully with this release IE will be less of a bane to us developers than it used to be... at least for a little while. It will certainly be nice to finally deprecate the usage of background images and DOM hacks to round corners.
Thinking on the users and developers base, maybe something like the Java Server Pages, for browser (Java Client Pages?). I do not like much Java, but is now well-know, can run on interpreted ou just-in-time compile and works well on JSP, can do the job much better than Javascript if used on the client side.
And a important note: Maybe will be slow as Javascript, but is a lot better to use than a stupid "language" like Javascript.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
I can see why IE adopted Chakra. Here's Neal Stephenson on overcoming disability: NSFW
Because it is immature, slow and doesn't actually beat h.264. It might improve, but that is still in the future.
Well, you can't count them like that, because MSIE had a huge market shared, so it really isn't fair to give it a weight of 1. You would most likely be giving IE a weight of 90, Firefox 5, and 5 distributed to everything else.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The licencing already is onerous.
That's your opinion. Given h.264's current ubiquity, your opinion is not exactly universal.
The licencing is the only roadblock to H.264 being worthwhile for the web.
It's already worthwhile for the web, as it's the primary codec in use today. That wouldn't be the case were the codec "not worthwhile"
It would be a non-issue if H.264 was royalty-free.
That's true, and that's my point. It h.264 were royalty free, or Theora patent-encumbered like h.264 (and it's not certain it's not, but that's a whole side issue), then there'd be no discussion, as h.264 is far superior to Theora.
So we should promote Theora because Google might release an open source codec of their own?
No, we should use Theora because it's royalty-free. Please read more carefully next time.
"Theora works today and will only improve with time. I'd speculate and even consider it likely that VP8 will also join the open, royalty-free fold courtesy of Google."
Regardless, what you'll see is that royalty-free will win out over time.
I never said it wouldn't. I'm talking about today, not "over time". "Over time" h.264 will be royalty free, although I don't expect h.264 to remain dominant until then. I'm also not sure it'll be displaced, as mp3 and jpeg are still around, in spite of superior formats. An almost universally installed base of h.264 accelerated hardware will be tough to go against.
One of the core goals of the push to HTML5 is to remove dependencies on propriety components on the web and that can't be achieved with H.264.
Yes, that's one of the goals. Yes, it can be achieved with h.264, because it removes the need for Flash + h.264. The net dependency on proprietary technologies is reduced. It just can't be fully achieved with h.264. So get cracking on a superior open source codec so we can remove *that* obstacle as well.
The *only* thing going for Theora is its license. Pretty much every other metric goes to h.264. It's a superior codec, it's more widely supported, and it's accelerated in pretty much every device on the market.
You'll come to understand that you were wrong. And that's okay. It's all learning.
Oh please, do explain which fact I have incorrect. The only thing I have stated that can be "wrong" is my opinion, and that would only reasonably be if the license ever became problematic. I've already stated my contingency for that, which is to continue to pay the license (as I already do when buying h.264-supporting software and hardware), for sites that can pay the license to pay the license, and those that can't to either just remain noncompliant, or switch to a different codec.
So again, please, do explain which bit you think I've got wrong. It can't be that h.264 costs money, and may cost more in the future. I can't be that h.264 is better than Theora. It can't be that some sites may have to switch to something other than h.264 due to licensing. It can't be that freely implementable standards are better for the web than closed ones.
No, I think the only thing you'll have is that I'm not 100% pure in my ideology. That I am capable of accepting both the idea that fully open standards are preferable, while still supporting h.264. Well, sorry, I'm not a mindless robot. I have the capability of rational thought, and can hold two opposing ideas at once. I can see the world both as it is and as I want it to be. You'll find that doesn't make one wrong, it helps make them more right, as the world itself isn't ideologically pure. I can prefer warm weather, while still rationally heading to the mountains to ski. I can hold the view that sugar is bad for you, yet still drink soda. I can believe that the web does better with fully open standards, yet endorse h.264 as a standard codec.
And so can most other people. Theora has already lost. I suggest you start making your peace with that. Mozilla needs to accept this as well, lest they find themselves fading into irrelevancy.
but they're choosing not to implement it for strictly ideological reasons.
Yes.
Hell, did you even read the description of the addon?
Guess what, I'm using it.
lose all the integrated DOM support, video overlays, and all the other crap that makes the video element superior to straight object embedding.
And the sites using those features are... http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/round/index.xhtml ? As far as non-Windows users are concerned, the most painful problem is Flash being crap for video playback, and the fix for that is one add-on or greasemonkey script away.
Please, that's garbage. The battle is lost.
The battle may be lost, but that doesn't change a thing. No, garbage is saying the war is over, and then crying foul when someone else has the balls to take a stand.
Guess what, I'm using it.
ROFL, wait, so you're defending Firefox's idiotic stance while, simultaneously, actively attempting to work around it? Hypocritical much?
As far as non-Windows users are concerned, the most painful problem is Flash being crap for video playback, and the fix for that is one add-on or greasemonkey script away.
That's not a fix. That's a hack to work around the Firefox devs. But if you're happy with a degraded browsing experience because Mozilla can't get their heads out of their collective ideological asses, that's your choice. The rest of us will just move on and find a project that gives users the option to make their own choices, as opposed to dictating to them from on high.
No, garbage is saying the war is over
What war? You really think Firefox choosing to hobble their browser is gonna somehow change the software patent landscape? Please, get real. The users will move on, baffled by Firefox's stance, and Mozilla will achieve nothing while damaging their own reputation in the process.
If the world embraces HTML 5 video overnight and everybody and their dog switches to Chrome because of its h264 support, it's already too late.
Yes, but the "overnight" part gives them slack to rock the boat some.
If they're playing a game of brinkmanship, it's a dangerous game. If they take it too far they're done, and they won't be able to raise awareness about ANY of the issues they care about. Patents are important, but I'm not sure H264 is the issue to push it on.
Maybe, but (IMO) it's not that dangerous -- not until IE9 is about to ship, anyway.
About other issues they want to raise awareness about, I come short trying to find others as important. The browser wars are on again, and this time with more and stronger players. IE is going standards-compliant for fear of irrelevance, the EU spanked MS hard (10 years too late), and Google is here to stay... So you could say they already did their job wonderfully on that front.
Guess what, I'm using it.
ROFL, wait, so you're defending Firefox's idiotic stance while, simultaneously, actively attempting to work around it? Hypocritical much?
No, I'm defending Firefox's stance because it's moral, and branding it a lost cause doesn't make it idiotic. And no, I'm working around Flash, as I have before with http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/50771
Nice straw man though. Maybe I should pull a Godwin on you: joining the German Resistance was obviously idiotic, right?
As far as non-Windows users are concerned, the most painful problem is Flash being crap for video playback, and the fix for that is one add-on or greasemonkey script away.
That's not a fix. That's a hack to work around the Firefox devs. But if you're happy with a degraded browsing experience because Mozilla can't get their heads out of their collective ideological asses, that's your choice. The rest of us will just move on and find a project that gives users the option to make their own choices, as opposed to dictating to them from on high.
Please do. In case you haven't figured out, you're 100% free to switch to a different browser, or fork Firefox and port the Fennec changes you seem so familiar with. Would you now please let "the rest of us" make our own choices too?
No, garbage is saying the war is over
What war? You really think Firefox choosing to hobble their browser is gonna somehow change the software patent landscape? Please, get real. The users will move on, baffled by Firefox's stance, and Mozilla will achieve nothing while damaging their own reputation in the process.
I hope you do realise you sound like a desperate guy ditched by his girlfriend, who's screaming out loud how his life will be great without her, while she'll suffer like hell because he was the best thing that ever happened to her...
Lieber Herr Gott mach mich stumm
Daß ich nicht nach Dachau komm.
And no, I'm working around Flash
Ah, I see, so you believe that your little hacky solution should be good enough for people who want a functioning video element. Well, it's not. Some people like a fully functional, standards compliant browser. Shocking, I know.
Maybe I should pull a Godwin on you: joining the German Resistance was obviously idiotic, right?
ROFL, yes, software patents == Nazi's, and Firefox == the German Resistance.
Congrats, that's an excellent sense of proportion you have there.
Would you now please let "the rest of us" make our own choices too?
But that's the whole point. You aren't given one. Firefox has decided what your choice is, and if you don't like it, you have to migrate to a different browser. Really, the hubris is pretty astonishing, as they honestly seem to feel they can force their ideals down their users throats, despite it being a futile effort, and that it'll somehow make a difference. It'd be hilarious if it weren't so dumb.
As an aside, though, I do hope someone forks Firefox and we can move on. Just as XFree86 was finally pushed aside for being too idealogical and slow to move, so too might Mozilla.
I hope you do realise you sound like a desperate guy ditched by his girlfriend
No, what I sound like is a guy who is baffled by the irrational behaviour of the leaders of a project that, for years, he's supported and enjoyed.
But yeah, you're right, better to just write off any legitimate arguments than to respond intelligently.
Firefox's market share will plummet without an h.264 solution.
Now that's just fear mongering. After all, we still have flash - which is installed on ~97% of desktops, right? ;)
Because Opera and Firefox support an open web, which H.264 is 100% incompatible with: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/#sec-Licensing
Yeah, who cares about open standards? Let's use Microsoft Markup Language (which only works in IE) for websites! You are also forgetting that when H.264 gets a monopoly, the MPEG LA can turn up the prices as much as they want and make shitloads of money.
Clever signature text goes here.
The fee is capped now because the MPEG LA wants a monopoly for video on the web, and when they do, they can charge even more. It's extremely shortsighted to use H.264. It's incompatible with an open web: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/#sec-Licensing
Clever signature text goes here.
It's the foundation of the fucking web!
Clever signature text goes here.
You don't get it. If Firefox had h.264 support, it could not be redistributed. Period. Everyone would have to download the 'offical' version from Mozilla. No Linux distro could include it. No one could change the code and distribute it. It would cripple Firefox. Why the hell doesn't anyone understand this?
That's not true. All of Mozilla is licensed under the LGPL or a more permissive license, so it can be linked to patent-encumbered (or, indeed, completely proprietary) code. At most, they might have to license the actual H.264 implementation under some non-GPL-based license, to avoid anti-patent clauses of some kind, but Google's lawyers don't see this as a problem with their use of ffmpeg under the LGPL, so I doubt it.
Linux distributions already ship H.264 codecs, so saying they wouldn't ship Firefox if it supported H.264 is unreasonable. Chromium supports H.264 if you compile it to do so, but I haven't heard of any distro saying they won't ship it for that reason. Indeed, fta's PPA package of Chromium already supports H.264 if you install ffmpeg with non-free codecs.
In short: you're wrong. Mozilla is acting on purely ideological grounds, not practical ones. Correctly so, in my opinion, although they'll probably lose in the end. This is not the first time they've taken a principled stance on what features to support, and nor should it be the last. Browser implementers should be moving the web forward in the long term, not just acting in their users' immediate self-interest.
MediaWiki developer, Total War Center sysadmin
Oh, how so? Outside US, that is?
H.264 is patented outside the US. Including most of Europe, for instance – that post lists 20 European countries. And Canada, Australia, Japan, India . . .
MediaWiki developer, Total War Center sysadmin