Microsoft Is Releasing an H.264 Plugin For Firefox

ndogg writes "Microsoft has announced that it is releasing an H.264 plugin for Firefox. This plugin does not add H.264 capabilities to Firefox, but rather allows it to use the H.264 capabilities built into Windows 7. With that in mind, it sounds like it may not work on anything other than Windows 7."

Comments

Good

[The End Of Days]

Seems like a pretty reasonable solution to me.

Re:Good

[LWATCDR]

It always was. Firefox could have used the installed codecs in Windows, OS/X, and Linux to offer H.264. The only reason I can figure Microsoft did this was to keep people from dropping Firefox and going to Chrome.

Re:Good

[figleaf]

Doesn't Chrome support Firefox-compatible plugins?
I would have sworn it did.

Re:Good

[sourcerror]

No, it doesn't.

Re:Good

[BagOBones]

No, but it does support user scripts natively that can be found in Opera and in the GreaseMonkey plugin for Firefox.

Re:Good

[dingen]

And Microsoft is of course always happy with a Windows-only solution that just doesn't work on other platforms.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

They probably have an update prepared for the win7 h264 codec that inserts adverts directly into the decoded data stream.

I'm assuming by Win7 only they're including the beta version they called vista.

Re:Good

[h4rm0ny]

Can I just be clear, here? Are you blaming Microsoft for not also writing support plugins for O/Ss they don't develop?

Re:Good

[dingen]

I'm not blaming anyone, altough I am somewhat surprised why Microsoft bothers to write Firefox plugins. I'm just saying Microsoft doesn't mind providing a solution that specifically works on Windows and not on any other platform Firefox runs on.

Re:Good

[FatdogHaiku]

Can I just be clear, here? Are you blaming Microsoft for not also writing support plugins for O/Ss they don't develop?

Yes! There is no telling how deep this issue actually runs in our modern society. I have found some sort of conspiracy whereby I can not procure O.E.M. engine parts for my Chevy pickup at the local Ford dealership! According to Mike Rowe, Ford has the top selling pickup. It should be incumbent on Ford to make sure that people who did not chose Ford products still have all the advantages and or benefits that Ford's paying customers derive from ownership. Also, as soon as a company successfully markets a flying car I expect someone to show up and retrofit all my vehicles!

Damn, I'm out of pills again...

Re:Good

[sexconker]

I'm not blaming anyone, altough I am somewhat surprised why Microsoft bothers to write Firefox plugins. I'm just saying Microsoft doesn't mind providing a solution that specifically works on Windows and not on any other platform Firefox runs on.

How is it surprising?
MS wants its users to be able to do shit.
MS recognizes many of its users use firefox.
MS wants h.264 video to work for them just as much as they want it to work for IE users.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

MS also wants h264 to win over WebM and knows adding support in Firefox will help.

Re:Good

[powerspike]

I have to agree with this as well, There are licencing issues with h264 and this would allow firefox to use the codec with the windows7 licening deal's which are already in place. MS wouldn't be able to do this for other operating systems (inwhich i couldn't blame them for either).

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

If this was something like a tab manager plugin, you would have a point. In case you were unaware, decoding video and displaying it isn't a trivial task. Why the hell should Microsoft put in a lot extra work to reinvent a wheel they already have just to allow any other OS, against whom they compete, just so they can be on an even playing field? Given that, this makes perfect sense. They are improving their overall user experience by adding a feature to a widely used browser that requires the competition to do work to offer the same.

If you want to complain, pick something reasonable, like why has firefox not implemented the codec themselves, or why have the other OS's not done this either? OR. . .you could prove to me that writing an OS independent version isn't so difficult and write it yourself.

Re:Good

[gmack]

Think: acceleration and battery life.

Microsoft recognizes that a lot of Windows prefer Firefox over IE and they won't change that any time soon users. On a laptop this change will save battery life and improve performance by offloading work from the CPU. MicroSoft isn't out money if you use FF over IE but they are out money if you decide to use some other OS because it has better battery life or plays movies better.

Re:Good

[GigaplexNZ]

I'm assuming by Win7 only they're including the beta version they called vista.

Unlikely, Vista doesn't include the H.264 Media Foundation codec that ships with Windows 7.

Re:Good

[ADRA]

Just a thought, as long as this is using DirectShow or the modern equivalent, doesn't this open up the web browser to any and all flaws in said stack? Are Microsoft or the rest of you really that open to rely on the multi-media stack for security tightness? I'll stay afraid and yet wish everyone else luck.

Re:Good

[wmac]

And you expect Microsoft develop plug-ins to promote competitor OS and browsers? Which commercial company does that?

Re:Good

[dingen]

How is it surprising?

I'm surprised Microsoft is developing things outside of it's own ecosystem. It's my understanding they don't generally do this.

And you can call me paranoid, but I really don't think enhancing the user experience of people using Firefox is at the top of Microsoft's list of priorities.

I suppose trying to outmanoeuvre Google by blocking WebM and Chrome makes some sense.

Re:Good

[ewanm89]

So the same NPAPI flash and quicktime plugins don't work in both chrome and firefox, I'm pretty sure they did the last I checked? Extensions no, but NPRuntime NPAPI plugins, yes.

Re:Good

[theurge14]

Apple supports Windows drivers and software on all of their consumer hardware.

Re:Good

[scdeimos]

There's nothing stopping anyone from writing a similar plugin for Firefox that uses the H.264 codec in ffmpeg, for example. Then you have the same functionality for Firefox in Linux (and probably OSX).

Re:Good

[Goaway]

Chrome supports h.264 just fine.

Re:Good

[Goaway]

Most browsers will already happily use DirectShow if you ask them nicely.

Re:Good

[dingen]

Which is exactly why Microsoft wants Firefox to support it as well - to prevent people from installing Chrome.

Re:Good

[BenoitRen]

Either you still don't understand or you've been living under a rock for the past year. There are good reasons that Firefox doesn't use the OS-provided codecs, and I'm not going to repeat them YET AGAIN.

Re:Good

[rjstanford]

Because Firefox isn't a good citizen and tries to reinvent shit that the underlying OS already provides, like video codecs. Sorry, but its true - this is not the job of the browser. Or at least it shouldn't be, and in every modern OS and every other modern web-browser, this relationship is very well understood - the OS provides a graphical framework, the applications use it.

And sorry, but Firefox wanting to provide a common experience over multiple OSs is a complete crap excuse. It might as well provide its own clipboard and font renderer then...

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

This is wrong. Microsoft is creating a non-standard web by pushing a plug-in for Firefox MS Windows 7 only and they know it. It has nothing to do with being a product they developed. They are ensuring a monopoly by creating a non-standard format that a majority of systems will support and thereby forcing obsolescence needlessly for MS Windows XP/Vista users and ensuring a monopoly by making sure people can't move to GNU/Linux. Now there is going to be a much tougher time getting a H.264 plug-in for Firefox when and if it becomes a critical component of the web (which is being forced on us by Microsoft's actions- which Mozilla is intentionally trying to keep from happening by not supporting). Enough said.

Re:Good

[Kalriath]

Yes, because it's Apple's hardware. Why should Microsoft support you running Mozilla Firefox on RedHat Linux? They're just looking out for their customers, although in this case it is slightly unexpected.

Re:Good

[SanityInAnarchy]

Where's a "-1 Wrong" option when you need it?

Yes, it does. It doesn't support Firefox-compatible addons. It does support Firefox-compatible plugins. There is a difference.

Re:Good

[brusk]

MS has several plugins that install automatically in Firefox on Windows, related to media playback, DRM, and .NET, not to mention Silverlight. Just as Google makes plugins that accelerate Google Talk, embed Google Earth, and interact with Picasa for non-Chrome browsers. Seems like SOP.

Re:Good

[dudpixel]

why not? plenty of linux devs support windows too. If they really wanted to get into the spirit of contributing to open source, they should have at least done a little more than just help themselves out...a little bit of goodwill for the community wouldn't hurt (its the open-source way).

but they dont have to....and they chose not to.

So rather than this being a "Microsoft contributes to open-source" story, it is merely just a "MS does business-as-usual". Nothing wrong with that, but also not praiseworthy either.

Re:Good

[LWATCDR]

No I have not and no their really isn't.
The reasons that they give for not using OS-provided codecs are at best questionable.
1 is security. But then you are assuming that Mozilla's codecs are more secure than those proved by the OS.
2. Availability. Windows XP doesn't have native h.264 support but 7 does. I am not so sure about Vista but you easily add h.264 support. OS/X has it native and Linux everybody adds it.

Application provided codecs make as much sense as Application provided printer, sound, and graphics drivers. It is all about code reuse and flexibility. And yes there was a time when each application did provide printer, sound, and graphics drivers. And by going with OS based codec support adding newer and better codecs will be a simple matter of adding the support to the OS. Just like printers, graphics, and sound are today.

Re:Good

[NoDos]

It will be a lucky event if it works at all, knowing Microslop!!

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

That's like saying Firefox is making a non-standard web because it doesn't run on the PSP.

The format is not even non-standard.

Why would it be any more difficult to get a H.264 plugin for Firefox? If anything it's easier, since it's already done on the largest supported platform?

You realize that IE9 supports WebM (if the codec is installed, same as Firefox will support H.264 if this plugin is installed)? Microsoft isn't forcing H.264. Theora sucking is forcing H.264, and then WebM came after everybody else -- including Apple and Google -- started supporting H.264. Because it didn't suck.

Re:Good

[Your.Master]

Frankly, I'd be more suspicious if they wrote the plugin for other OSes. That would point to Microsoft promoting the H.264 codec by putting it on all major browsers on all major OSes. As it is, it looks like Microsoft is promoting Windows 7 by putting all major codecs on all major browsers.

Re:Good

[Pentium100]

They are ensuring a monopoly by creating a non-standard format ...

h.264 is standard. Even digital TV (DVB-T) in my country uses it. My 4 year old cellphone can play it (not all profiles though), most of the HD movies and TV shows on pirate bay are h.264, so are most of anime fansubs (even SD ones). Youtube and blip use it. IIRC there is a codec that also works on Linux and it may even be open source (x264), though I do not really care about the openness of the source as long as it works.

In short - h264 is supported almost everywhere, so it is standard. Whatever codec Firefox has - now that's non-standard, since probably only Firefox and Opera can play it.

Now there is going to be a much tougher time getting a H.264 plug-in for Firefox when and if it becomes a critical component of the web

Well, Firefox can just use system codecs. I have two h.264 decoders - ffdshow and CoreAVC. Actually, I would prefer FF using CoreAVC instead of having its own less efficient decoder (CoreAVC manages to divide the load to all of my CPUs quite well). People with video cards that support CUDA would probably like that too.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, but Chrome supports h.264 anyway so it is irrelevant.

Re:Good

[Confusador]

It's surprising because MS also wants people to use IE instead of Firefox. There was a time when they would try to make it more difficult for competitors to access features of Windows to push people toward their products. They've gotten better at that after getting hammered by regulators, but in this case they are not only exposing the function, they are going to the trouble of implementing it for the competition. It's not even like Firefox is capable of it on other platforms, so they're really going out of their way to make the Windows experience better. For those who remember the 'old' days, it seems very strange.

Re:Good

[hairyfeet]

Agree 100% with your post. I've been a Firefox user since back when they called it Firebird but their "cross platform or GTFO" attitude is really starting to tick me off and lean me to switching to Chromium. Frankly not supporting low rights mode on Vista and 7 is irresponsible and foolish. The tech has been out since 2007, and it isn't like the Linux kernel devs couldn't design an API to allow low rights mode on Linux, they just don't see a need. So why should everyone on a modern windows be put at risk simply because the Linux guys don't need something? Chrome is able to use it just fine.

Sadly it looks as if Mozilla is simply gonna ignore the OS features that the others use, making their experience worse than everyone else. With lower powered machines becoming popular and laptops everywhere using the GPU for rendering video just makes sense, but instead of using common sense and just using whatever the OS has installed it looks like Mozilla is gonna stick so tightly to their principles that they will become irrelevant. I've started switching to Chromium based Comodo Dragon, and as soon as I find a few more plug ins to have everything set up as I like it it is bye bye Mozilla. Damned shame as I've quite enjoyed FireFox, but I can't risk my customer's security to satisfy Mozilla's principles.

Re:Good

[Guspaz]

I'm surprised Microsoft is developing things outside of it's own ecosystem. It's my understanding they don't generally do this.

I think we passed that moment when Microsoft became Linux kernel developers by submitting some virtualization-related patches.

Re:Good

[Joce640k]

No...it removes a reason to switch Firefox->Chrome - hardware video decoding.

Re:Good

[afidel]

Well yeah, since they are a cornerstone member of MPEG-LA they stand to make a LOT of money off H.264 winning. Though it seems likely that VP8 would be infringing anyways (look at how little the VLC guys had to do to adapt the H.264 code to decode VP8).

Re:Good

[eggnoglatte]

It's surprising because MS also wants people to use IE instead of Firefox.

Why would they care at this point? Except for Opera, nobody is making money off of browsers. The only reason why Microsoft wanted to dominate browsers the browser "market" at some point was because at that time it still seemed that control over the browser would also mean control over the web access portal (search engine, start pages etc). The world has changed significantly since then. First, because of all the antitrust rulings (esp. the European ones), they now have to make it easy to choose a different search engine etc. Second, the users have become much more savvy in their use of the web - you are not going to prevent people from heading straight to facebook or google just because your browser doesn't have a direct link to those pages.

So basically, IE contributes virtually nothing to the Microsoft's bottom line. If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say that they probably wouldn't mind getting rid of IE, except that they need a default browser for Windows, and they don't want to rely on third party software for that.

Re:Good

[centuren]

And Microsoft is of course always happy with a Windows-only solution that just doesn't work on other platforms.

As they should be. Just as vendors for other platforms should be happy to release solutions that work for theirs.

Re:Good

[John Betonschaar]

+1 there

I used to be a big Firefox fan, but I've recently switched to Chrome as well, partly because of the stupid attitude Firefox developers have with respect to h264. I know enough about video codecs and h264 to be pretty sure that alternative 'free' codecs like vp8 or theora (note: I'm not saying 'open' since h264 is also an open standard) are 99% guaranteed to infringe on many of the exact same patents implemented by h264, and that not supporting h264 (through OS codecs) because it is patent-encumbered is a red herring and profoundly stupid from Firefox' perspective. The h264 train has departed long ago, every major OS supports it natively and efficiently, it's built into hardware, and frankly, it's simply the best codec that's available right now. Licensing issues are not an issue for Firefox if they just use OS codecs, and I definitely don't want a browser that implements 5 different and probably inefficient video codecs anyway, so why not just be a bit pragmatic about it and include a plugin or extension that optimally uses the technology provided by the OS. I'm pretty sure almost every Firefox user would just install the plugin and get on with their work.

Re:Good

[wmac]

You mentioned the reason yourself. Microsoft is a company (incidentally one of the pillars of the US industry and technical influence in the world) and companies are for profit. They are not charity.

On a side note, It is interesting to me when I see people from US call MS evil. Any Anti-US group/organization would agree on the benefit of removing MS out of existence :)

Re:Good

[kantos]

I had a friend that worked at MS... he said that the most common browser there wasn't IE... but firefox. So to me this is really the MS devs being selfish and wanting firefox to support h.264 content for HTML 5

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of companies provide software to run on OS they don't develop.

Look at Google software running on apple and windows, and blackberry, not just on Android
Look at Apple with itunes and quicktime running on Windows, Safari too I think.
Look at Gnu software running on any platform, not just Linux
Look at Oracle providing Java, OpenOffice, MySql on lots of platforms beside their Solaris OS

Now just to get back to Firefox/Microsoft relationship:
Mozilla provides a great software that works among others on Windows machines, and provides source code to everyone (including Microsoft of course). This adds value to the Windows platform.
Then Microsoft adds a feature to Firefox on Windows7, but does not provide the source, so it only adds value to themselves.

What Microsoft is doing is probably legal. But it's certainly not fairplay!

Re:Good

[Requiem18th]

The only reason I can figure Microsoft did this was to keep people from dropping Firefox and going to Chrome.

That's the only reason you can think of really? My first impression was different. If I recall correctly, the main problem with Mozilla and H.264 is that, while there are open source decoders, they are illegal to distribute in Usptostan.

THAT, not the (also real) hate for flash but that; was the main reason for the push of theora and the <video> tag and HTML5.

So the main advantage I see for MS is not eliminating a reason to switch from Firefox to Chrome (both rivals for IE) but eliminating a reason to switch from Windows to *nix.

Re:Good

[maxwell demon]

And to prevent people from using WebM for videos because they want their content to show up on Firefox.

The fact that it gives Firefox users on Windows an incentive to upgrade to the latest Windows version is also very much intended, I guess (of course no one will upgrade just because of this, but if someone is already considering whether he should update or not, this increases the bias for upgrading).

Re:Good

[h4rm0ny]

I'm surprised Microsoft is developing things outside of it's own ecosystem. It's my understanding they don't generally do this.

MS want Windows to be chosen over Apple or Linux. Once, they tried the nasty trick of trying to corrupt standards so that a browser (IE) which only ran on Windows was the preference. But it's in line with those same aims (not to mention much fairer) to also take the strategy of making sure multiple browsers work better on Windows than on other platforms. In either case, the result is the same: an advantage to Windows. A temporary one, mind you. MS is merely leading the way with this. It'll all even out soon enough.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla do use native APIs for the GPU acceleration.

Apple have been withholding APIs so it makes it harder to compete.

There are times when being not native is a good idea, like to prevent phishing.

In some sense, Firefox is more native than Chrome.

I do actually prefer native, but for an organisation as tiny as Mozilla, it's not practical.

Re:Good

[LWATCDR]

"So the main advantage I see for MS is not eliminating a reason to switch from Firefox to Chrome (both rivals for IE) but eliminating a reason to switch from Windows to *nix."

Really? How do you figure that?
Windows has a huge advantage in many software categories including games, cad, and most all vertical markets.
And last time I checked Firefox ran on Windows now....
Nope Chrome has Google behind pushing it and Google is pushing Apps in Chrome! Firefox isn't a real threat because there is no multi billion dollar company pushing it hard.
If anything Chrome will allow people to move off Windows and onto unix like OSs...

Re:Good

[dingen]

That's exactly what I was thinking when I posted the earlier statement about Microsoft not minding a Windows-only solution.

Of course I'm not saying they should also provide plugins for other platforms. Like I said, I'm just surprised they're thinking outside of their own ecosystem, but aren't minding it as long as it only benefits their own platform.

Re:Good

[bws111]

So in other words, Google wants to get as many users as possible, even if it means supporting another OS.
Apple wants to get as many iTunes users as possible, even if it means supporting another OS.
Oracle wants to get as many Java, OpenOffice, and MySql users as possible, even if it means supporting another OS.
GNU wants to get as many users as possible, even if it means supporting another OS.
Microsoft wants to get as many users as possible, even if it means supporting another browser.

Get back to us when Google provides some special plugin to make Bing work better on Windows. Or Apple improves the experience for Rhapsody users on Linux. Or Oracle improves C# on Windows.

Re:Good

[rjstanford]

Sorry, but that's just bull.

Apple provides lots of API access to play videos. The whole Quicktime system (as opposed to the app) is based on that one notion, and was one of the earliest public champions of H.264. But that's irrelevant since we're talking about Windows - which also provides lovingly documented ways to use its freely available video APIs. As to your phishing comment - WTF does that have to do with anything, even if it made sense?

And saying that providing your own video codecs (and for that matter your own drop down menus is harder than using an OS API is just plain wrong, as any developer will tell you.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

...although in ANY case it is slightly unexpected.

There, fixed that for you.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't/wasn't there a patch that did the same thing for linux using gstreamer?

Re:Good

[wildstoo]

Application provided codecs make as much sense as Application provided printer, sound, and graphics drivers.

Oh yeah? Tell that to the VLC developers.

It is all about code reuse and flexibility. And yes there was a time when each application did provide printer, sound, and graphics drivers. And by going with OS based codec support adding newer and better codecs will be a simple matter of adding the support to the OS. Just like printers, graphics, and sound are today.

This is true... until you stop seeing the web browser as just another Application. Google are slowly turning the browser into the OS, and Microsoft is coming around to that way of thinking.

For many people, home users and business users, the web browser is probably the #1 app on their machines. They use it for e-mail, they use it for Facebook, they use it for sharing photos, they use it for shopping and gaming and booking tickets and a million other things. It's loaded when they log on and only unloaded when they shut down. It's their reason for owning a computer, and it's entertainment, communication and productivity rolled into one.

IMHO, the truth is ChromeOS has Microsoft scared. They know that the "browser as OS" paradigm isn't going to take hold next year when the hardware hits, but glance 10 years down the road and things look a lot murkier. Suddenly, building functionality into the browser itself doesn't look so crazy, because the browser could be conceivably be performing all the functions we currently expect from the native OS, while combining the advantages of cloud and local computing.

This plugin is simply Microsoft creating as many disincentives to Chrome adoption as possible. If improving a competitor's product gives them an overall advantage, that's what they'll do.

Re:Good

[rjstanford]

The only reason I can figure Microsoft did this was to keep people from dropping Firefox and going to Chrome.

That's the only reason you can think of really? My first impression was different. If I recall correctly, the main problem with Mozilla and H.264 is that, while there are open source decoders, they are illegal to distribute in Usptostan.

Of course its also unnecessary, since (just like printer drivers), video codecs are provided by the underlying operating system and don't need to be - and shouldn't be - distributed as part of the web browser. Except that Firefox, almost uniquely among applications that can perform video playback, refuses to use any OS-provided codecs, no matter how stupid that is.

There is a codec distribution problem. Its also a solved problem. The fact that Firefox is having a hard time solving it again shouldn't be their user's problem (but in the real world, it is).

Re:Good

[kmoorman]

If browsers don't matter at this point, why did Google create Chrome instead of continuing to support Firefox?

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

User tracking. Poor performance in Firefox. Firefox is a pain to work on.

Re:Good

[Rockoon]

IMHO, the truth is ChromeOS has Microsoft scared.

Thats funny, considering that Google says it days are numbered, that Android is their focus because it does everything ChromeOS does, and more.

Re:Good

[LWATCDR]

No they don't. The designer of Gmail who is now a former Google employee said that. And that is his opinion and one that I share. But it isn't Google that said that and it is still just an opinion.

Re:Good

[LWATCDR]

VLC is a good program but it really is just a media player and a good one but has nothing to do with this issue.
There is going to be H.264 media on the web. That is a given since we already have it.
IE can play it.
Chrome can play it.
Opera can play it.
Safari can play it.
Firefox can not unless you add the new microsoft plug in.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed to flaws in its own decoder? Or flaws in VDPAU drivers or ffmpeg? Bugs can be anywhere.

And this only effects Windows users. People that have something to lose, aren't using that platform anyway. And if they do, they don't have to install Microsoft's plugin. Get one that is based on ffmpeg, if you want.

Re:Good

[mcgrew]

The end user usn't usually MS's customer. MS's customers are those who build computers -- Dell, HP, Acer, homebrew nerds. The lastter are the only users who are MS's customers.

But I agree that MS shouldn't have to support non-Windows machines.

Re:Good

[wbo]

Just a thought, as long as this is using DirectShow or the modern equivalent, doesn't this open up the web browser to any and all flaws in said stack? Are Microsoft or the rest of you really that open to rely on the multi-media stack for security tightness? I'll stay afraid and yet wish everyone else luck

If the web browser runs in Low-Rights/Reduced Privileged Mode then any flaws in Media Foundation or DirectShow are not likely to lead to an exploitable attack vector. (Reduced Privileged mode causes a process to run with a permission level below that of a regular user and allows very little access to the file system or registry.)

Unfortunately Firefox refuses to support Reduced Privileged Mode on Vista and Windows 7. Internet Explorer and Chrome do, however.

Re:Good

[Requiem18th]

How do you figure that? It makes more sense than your theory. Your theory is that people will switch to Chrome then to Mac/ChromeOS/Android. This doesn't quite make sense, people are not going to switch OS because they tried another browser TEH CHROME. People don't use Chrome and switch to Mac. In fact people don't switch OSes, They switch machines.

On the other hand many governments are demanding open standards, including video codecs for the web. Ensuring that Firefox can run H.264, while illegal in Ubuntu and the like. Helps creating the illusion that H.264 is an unencumbered standard, acceptable for governments and the like.

My point is that MS doesn't have much to gain from helping Firefox, but they have much to gain from helping H.264 since they thrive on proprietary standards.

Re:Good

[Requiem18th]

As far as I know, this is some kind of push from Mozilla to promote open standards like theora. Enabling Firefox to use closed standards is trivial, they just didn't want to.

Like I said in another reply, this move from MS helps both Firefox -which doesn't help MS- and H.264 -which does help MS-

So this makes more sense as a pro H.264 move than a pro-Firefox move or an anti-Chrome move (which makes even less sense).

Re:Good

[BenoitRen]

VLC is a good program but it really is just a media player and a good one but has nothing to do with this issue.

Yes, it does. VLC provides its own collection of codecs instead of using the OS-provided ones.

Re:Good

[BenoitRen]

1 is security. But then you are assuming that Mozilla's codecs are more secure than those proved by the OS.

You didn't actually read their reasons if that's what you come up with on that point. There are plenty of websites out there that urge you to install their own codec to view their video content. They're actually malware.

There are more reasons, but I trust that you can go read them yourself.

Application provided codecs make as much sense as Application provided printer, sound, and graphics drivers.

Every web browser already has their own libraries for decoding image formats. It's not such a stretch for it to also include libraries for other embedded content.

Re:Good

[LWATCDR]

Not really VLC is a single program and they made the choice to provide their own codecs. Fine it is a program that made a choice. It isn't a web browser that does more than just play media and because VLC does it doesn't mean it is the correct choice or the only correct choice.
Plus VLC H.264!

Mozilla has decided to not provide the functionality at all. That is the big difference. They could have but didn't and they do not have a single good technical reason to not supply that functionality. The reason is all political and not technical.
The technical reasons they give are just excuses.

Re:Good

[BenoitRen]

Thank you for once again confirming that you don't get it at all. Excuses my ass.

Re:Good

[LWATCDR]

"You didn't actually read their reasons if that's what you come up with on that point. There are plenty of websites out there that urge you to install their own codec to view their video content. They're actually malware."
Really? I have never seen one. But let me ask you this... If there are already plenty of sites that urge you to install their own codecs that are actually malware.... How will this change anything?
When you go to that same same site will it not still ask you to install that codec?

Bad technical excuses for what is nothing but a political statement.

And you are right about graphics... Which is a shame.
Imagine if they there had been a graphics lib standard in Windows, Linux, and OS/X! And imagine if Microsoft and Mozilla had both used it. We would not have had to wait for Microsoft to put in png support and then we wouldn't have had to wait for Microsoft to then fix the png support in IE.
We could have moved the internet much more quickly to png and away form GIF....
Yea kind of makes my point why browsers should use OS level codec support all in a nutshell.
 

Re:Good

[BenoitRen]

If there are already plenty of sites that urge you to install their own codecs that are actually malware.... How will this change anything? When you go to that same same site will it not still ask you to install that codec?

It might still ask, but if all web browsers have video support built-in, there will be less of it, and users will expect to not have to install anything.

Bad technical excuses for what is nothing but a political statement.

Because it can't be both, right?

Re:Good

[bill_mcgonigle]

They're just looking out for their customers, although in this case it is slightly unexpected.

To be fair, they're also hurting Google's WebM efforts at the same time. 2 birds.

But I agree, this should be available.

Re:Good

[LWATCDR]

It is both.
A bad technical excuse to justify a political statement.

What it isn't is a good technical reason. What clearly happened is Mozilla decided to not support h.264 because it was not open and then came up with a list of excuses not to.
As I showed if we had a system for graphics like we do for video things would have been better not worse. You wouldn't be stuck with some browsers with png support, some without png support, and some with partial png support.
Just as now we are going to be stuck with some browsers having h.264 support, some with WebM support, and some with Theora support.
If all the browsers went to OS/Codec support then Theora and WebM would have a much better chance of catching on and replacing h.264 and Flash than the system that is now in place.

Re:Good

[Risen888]

Nope Chrome has Google behind pushing it and Google is pushing Apps in Chrome! Firefox isn't a real threat because there is no multi billion dollar company pushing it hard.

This doesn't make a damn bit of sense. Mozilla has been eating Microsoft's lunch in the browser space for the better part of a decade. Hell, we're well past being "a real threat," and looking seriously at "driving IE into the sea."

Re:Good

[hairyfeet]

Hi MR AC! A few questions: A, how do you explain Quicktime, which anyone is free to use in OSX? B, If Firefox is "more native" why do over and over people ask for Low Rights mode and get told "Not cross platform, won't fix" by the devs? C, you DO know that the Moz devs have been hiding behind the "not cross platform" mantra, yes? D, You DO know as well that they can't claim size or resources since MSFT has a quite large developer base on staff and I'm quite sure if Mozilla was to request help in implementing low rights mode MSFT would be happy to provide it, as it makes Windows Vista and 7 safer and less prone to attack?

Frankly it all comes down to "Cross platform or GTFO" which is hamstringing FF compared to other browsers. There is NO REASON why Mozilla couldn't use DirectX on Windows, QT on Apple, and GStreamer on Linux and have fully accelerated functionality across OSes with NO licensing issues AT ALL, they simply refuse to do so. Likewise they could provide MUCH greater security by providing low rights mode on Windows Vista and 7, but instead refuse to implement it unless Apple and Linux does, which frankly don't need it due to a complete different underlying arch. Again because it is in their best interests I'm sure MSFT would be happy to help, so it wouldn't cost them a penny. It is just bad atitude on the devs part, which is why I'm now running Chromium based Comodo Dragon. Because I can't risk my customers security just to allow the Moz developers to stick to their high horse.

Re:Good

[dudpixel]

Given that I'm not from the US, that last point seems out of place in this discussion...

not to worry, I agree that MS are a company that is for profit, but surely recent history has shown that companies that offer "good-will" to the community, and in particular the open-source community, actually reap rewards as a result...

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera can play it.

If I recall correctly from when I tried Opera, Opera can play it on all platforms that GStreamer supports.... except Windows.

Great summary

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news... Anonymous Coward is going for first post. It seems as if it may not work if he does not go for first post.

Re:Great summary

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed it, bra

Sounds just like Microsoft

[dust11]

So in effect, to use said extension, you will need to either:

a) Upgrade your XP/Vista box to Windows 7
b) Say goodbye to your Mac
c) Ditch your *nix distro

I can't really see many people doing that. However for anybody using the operating system, it's really not such a bad idea. While the idea of Microsoft developing a Firefox extension may turn heads, they're only doing it to benefit themselves.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[gman003]

Don't view the plugin as an enhancement for Firefox. View it as an extension for Windows 7 - it's increasing compatibility with a certain feature. And then, it all makes sense - it's Microsoft's business to improve Windows, and now Firefox is getting a free boost on that platform.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[Dan East]

Are you proposing that Microsoft should also write Firefox extensions to utilize the lower-level internals of other operating systems such as OSX and Linux, although Microsoft has neither the technical experience nor obligation to do so, just to keep competing operating systems on a level playing field? I'm sure that 3rd parties will quickly follow suite and provide similar functionality for other operating systems, assuming it can be done at all.

Remember, Firefox does not include an H.264 decoder due to patent issues. MS holds the necessary licenses already - essentially those licensed to use Windows have already paid in some way for H.264 codecs, thus MS is doing Firefox users a big favor by extending that functionality. I'm sure Apple can do the same with OSX, but I'm unsure about the whole patent issue when it comes to Linux.

If I remember correctly, when people were complaining about Firefox not supporting H.264 decoding, Mozilla specifically alluded to the fact that OS vendors would have to provide this functionality to work around patent issues.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[beakerMeep]

It's hard to see anything MS does without some cautious skepticism that they may hold ulterior motives. I personally see two possibilities here:

1) They are trying to keep the FF userbase from building up a critical mass of users watching video with open source/patent free codecs such as WebM

2) They are trying to further marginalize Flash video (since at the moment Flash based video is the only H.264 option for FF users).

These two things arent mutually exclusive either, but I think they make more sense given MS's history and the context. What you said would make more sense if MS released a WebM player for IE/FF. To be clear though, having more options is good and this release isn't necessarily bad, but it's a good idea to keep in mind MS's past gift horses.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[interval1066]

a) Upgrade your XP/Vista box to Windows 7

Wow... I can't think of any good reason to still be running anything less than XP, if you're going to go down the windows road...

b) Say goodbye to your Mac c) Ditch your *nix distro

Ditching linux... yeah, that ain't happening.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[noidentity]

Presumably Windows 7 has a media decoding architecture that can make use of multiple cores/hardware acceleration, so this takes advantage of that. Why should a browser have to reinvent all this, when the OS provides it? But it must be evil to do this, since it only works on Windows 7. At times, the anti-Microsoft bias here is too much!

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[hahn]

So in effect, to use said extension, you will need to either: a) Upgrade your XP/Vista box to Windows 7 b) Say goodbye to your Mac c) Ditch your *nix distro I can't really see many people doing that. However for anybody using the operating system, it's really not such a bad idea. While the idea of Microsoft developing a Firefox extension may turn heads, they're only doing it to benefit themselves.

Microsoft is a Fortune 500 company that exists to make profit. What do you expect from them? Help other companies compete with them? Work on projects with no financial benefit or strategic value at all? Are there companies I'm unaware of that do this?

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[vux984]

. I'm sure Apple can do the same with OSX, but I'm unsure about the whole patent issue when it comes to Linux.

Can, but probably won't. Firefox reproduces core functionality already provided by Safari. ;)

That said, its unclear to me why a 3rd party couldn't do it, they wouldn't need an h264 patent license to connect firefox to the h264 codec already licensed and present on the computer would they?

As for linux, same thing... if one has an h264 codec, then the plug in should be doable. I don't offhand know much about the availability of h264 on linux... i use linux... but primarily for servers... usually headless or virtualized... so h264 support hasn't come up much. :)

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[TheoCryst]

Exactly. Microsoft is investing pretty heavily into HTML5 going forward (starting with IE9), and all this does is ensure that 99.9% of Windows 7 users have the ability to view H.264 video content. With this plugin, the three browsers that make up the vast majority of Windows users--IE, Firefox, and Chrome--along with Safari now fully support H.264 video.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[jo_ham]

Why say goodbye to the Mac? If you are desperate for H.264 content on the Mac and are in love with Firefox, you can just fire up Safari or one of any number of other browsers that support H.264 on the Mac.

The same can be said for XP - no need to update.

As for "typical Microsoft" did you expect them to be actively developing new features like this (and really, it's an extension to windows rather than an extension to firefox) to anything other than their current Windows product?

XP and Vista are supported products, but I'm not expecting them to release new software on them - fine if they do, but it's no great conspiracy if they do not in this case.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[camperdave]

Wow... I can't think of any good reason to still be running anything less than XP, if you're going to go down the windows road...

I can: Because corporate policy says so.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[h4rr4r]

How many h264 videos you watching at work? It seems pretty clear he meant for home use.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[sexconker]

Wow... I can't think of any good reason to still be running anything less than XP, if you're going to go down the windows road...

I can: Because corporate policy says so.

He said good reason.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[tenchikaibyaku]

You can view it however you want and it might not even be particularly wrong as such, but to me it seems like a pretty obvious attack on WebM and open standards for HTML5 video. h264 is not open and firefox will never be able to ship with it.

Yes, you can outsource the problem to things like gstreamer, but the problem still remains - you will be unable to ship a complete open source system that plays video on the web and doesn't depend on any legally dubious patented stuff. As I've understood it, mozilla has avoided taking this approach in order to be able to steer the development onto the more open alternative.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[camperslo]

From the article, it is a plugin to an extension:

"This new plug-in, known as the HTML5 Extension for Windows Media Player Firefox Plug-in, is available for download"

Perhaps the VLC plugin could be enhanced to do the same thing?

The article doesn't mention support for GPU acceleration, or to what extent it uses/supports 64 bit mode or extended instructions.

- - -
Hiroshima 45, Tchernobyl 86, Windows 95

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[LordLimecat]

Wow... I can't think of any good reason to still be running anything less than XP, if you're going to go down the windows road...

I can, having worked with 7 for about 24 months now (since the December beta leak in 2008). XP is a heck of a lot less arcane (you seen the firewall configuration? Or Event log? Or task scheduler?), easier to recover from a disaster (installable recovery console, a repair mode that works, and drives can be cloned without having to dick around with bcdedit), easier to do advanced things with (like cloning hard drives, setting up ext3 drivers), and has substantially fewer bugs.

Its nice that theres UAC in 7, but you basically already had that in XP, with stuff that requires admin popping up a runas box, and most of the other stuff (eyecandy, iscsi support) can be tacked on after the fact. There are some security enhancements, but if you have out of date browser plugins, it really doesnt matter, Im seeing more and more pwned Win7 boxes, as coders figure out how to bypass protected mode, ASLR, and all the rest.

When doing a deployment for a hundred users who cant be bothered to use a non-awful browser, yes, possibly Id do 7 because theyre unlikely to encounter those issues; but for myself, theres really no comparison, XP is just better, and I wish I hadnt upgraded (since downgrading is a PITA, as I run server software).

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

> With this plugin, the three browsers that make up the vast majority of Windows users--IE, Firefox, and Chrome--along with Safari now fully support H.264 video.

Without this plugin (but with codec support installed in the OS), the vast majority of Windows users--IE, Firefox, and Chrome--along with Safari and Opera support WebM video.

WebM codec support can installed in the OS from here:
http://www.webmproject.org/code/#repositories

According to previous advice from Microsoft (which they issued when Google announced the Google Chrome Frame Plugin for IE), browser plugins are additional security risks which should be avoided.

Happily, browser users on all platforms will be able to view WebM video content without any plugin.

The very first hardware video decode accelerators for WebM/VP8 are just beginning to appear on the market.
http://blog.webmproject.org/2010/12/chips-delivers-vp8-hd-video-hardware.html

On Linux, BTW, work is in progress to write a state tracker for the Gallium3D graphics drivers which will use the GPU shaders to accelerate video decoing, which will work even for generic GPU hardware which does not include specific hardware support for a given codec.

YouTube announced some time ago that by that time 80% of the videos of YouTube were available in WebM format.

Perhaps when YouTube switches to WebM primarily, Microsoft and Apple might then try to catch up with that effort and provide software in their respective graphics stacks to support GPU-shader-based hardware acceleration of video decode for WebM on Windows 7/Windows XP and OSX/iOS respectively.

Or perhaps not.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[GigaplexNZ]

Vista has the same framework architecture (Media Foundation) but it doesn't include the array of codecs that were added in 7 (such as H.264).

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

. I'm sure Apple can do the same with OSX, but I'm unsure about the whole patent issue when it comes to Linux.

Can, but probably won't. Firefox reproduces core functionality already provided by Safari. ;)

That said, its unclear to me why a 3rd party couldn't do it, they wouldn't need an h264 patent license to connect firefox to the h264 codec already licensed and present on the computer would they?

As for linux, same thing... if one has an h264 codec, then the plug in should be doable. I don't offhand know much about the availability of h264 on linux... i use linux... but primarily for servers... usually headless or virtualized... so h264 support hasn't come up much. :)

This particular plugin uses a machine's graphics hardware to accelerate decoding of video.

Even if one is running Linux as the OS on a given machine, one has still purchased the hardware of the machine, and so one is still licensed to use the h.264 video decoder functions embedded in the graphics hardware of that machine.

There is no Windows dependency involved in the purchased-with-the-machine-hardware license for the h.264 graphics hardware support.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[scdeimos]

According to previous advice from Microsoft (which they issued when Google announced the Google Chrome Frame Plugin for IE), browser plugins are additional security risks which should be avoided.

Which, I might point out, didn't stop them from silently installing the "Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant" add-on in the Firefox browser so Firefox users would be vulnerable to attack ^h^h^h...^h^h^h able to install ClickOnce applications hosted on the web.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[metrix007]

How about because safari is complete shit?

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[mcrbids]

It's hard to see anything MS does without some cautious skepticism that they may hold ulterior motives. I personally see two possibilities here:

You're kidding, right?

It's not an "ulterior" motive because an ulterior motive is hidden and/or undisclosed. Their motives here are blindingly clear: to service their customers so that they make money. If you think it's anything else, it's not that they have "ulterior" motives, it's that you have a naive point of view.

And, for what it's worth, it's pretty much OK! Every company has the motivation service their customers so that they make money! And guess what? Mac users are not Microsoft's customer! Neither are PS3 users, Android users, Linux users, or iPhone users!

Microsoft (the company) doesn't do anything at all for altruistic reasons. And for the most part, neither does any other company. Google only seems to because their business model benefits by keeping the web open. (for them to index and serve ads on top of) Even their open-source Android platform serves ads via Google!

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[BenoitRen]

Wow... I can't think of any good reason to still be running anything less than XP, if you're going to go down the windows road...

If it works for you, it works, and upgrading just for the sake of upgrading is stupid. An old box running Windows NT4 or earlier or a version of Win9x isn't going to run better with a newer Windows version. Quite the contrary, in fact.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[Rob Y.]

Their motives here are blindingly clear: to service their customers so that they make money.

Is that why they essentially gave away Windows XP for free on netbooks? To make money? Nope. It was also blindingly clear there that they were putting a potentially costly thumb in the dyke to prevent this Linux netbook fad from catching on. Ultimately, I guess, that makes them money by maintaining Windows' market share, but that's the ultimate goal of all their underhanded stuff. They didn't open up the Office XML formats to make money - they did it to stop a competitor. And just because that allows them to continue making money, the motivation still seems pretty 'ulterior' to me.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[hairyfeet]

You're right! Not being able to ship a completely free operating systems affect Windows 7 users......uhhh, how exactly does this affect Windows 7 users again? You'd think as libertarian heavy as /. is this would go without explanation, but here goes: MSFT negotiates and buys the right to ship several codecs on their new OS, including H.264. Then MSFT writes a plug in to maximize their ROI by making it easier for more browsers to use what they paid for and thus make their new OS more appealing. And this has exactly what to do with FOSS again?

Lets be honest folks: Nobody is holding a gun to the distro developers and saying "You are NOT allowed to buy any codecs, you commie punks!". They could just as easily buy the rights to the H.264 codec as MSFT did. But they don't want to because they want to be "free as in beer and freedom man!" and you know what? That is just lovely. it is their distros to do as they will. But just because you give something away does not mean everyone else has to as well. The MPEG-LA wants to be paid to ship, you pay them or don't use it. But don't complain just because others decide they want to support it when you don't. It isn't like there aren't groups out there happy to sell codecs to FOSS users, it is just they ain't buying. That is their right but you shouldn't be pissed because Apple and MSFT decide they want to give their customers a smoother experience and are willing to pay for it.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[MidnightBrewer]

This is good news for web developers and content creators - it means that Microsoft is even more serious than expected about embracing HTML 5 and standardizing media formats. It might seem like a shame to use a patented codec, but on the bright side, we're getting something that will continue to be developed and refined, and doesn't require a cumbersome, buggy abstraction layer AKA Flash.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[mysidia]

Mac users are not Microsoft's customer! Neither are PS3 users, Android users, Linux users, or iPhone users!

I think that's a narrow view. I know PS3, Android, Mac, and iPhone users, and all of them are Microsoft customers as well.

Most Mac users need to buy things from Microsoft, for example, MS Office, so they can work with documents created by Windows users.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[Your.Master]

You're missing the point. This plugin makes Windows better, in the sense that you can use Firefox and view H.264 content.

Writing a similar plugin for Firefox on the Mac does not make MS Office better.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[Confusador]

Firefox reproduces core functionality already provided by IE. ;)

That's why this is so surprising, though as others have pointed out it's likely part of an effort to steer people to h264 instead of, say, VP8. Apple seems to be on board with that campaign to some extent, so I wouldn't be entirely surprised to see the same from them.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[Confusador]

Help other companies compete with them?

Isn't that exactly what they're doing, here? Helping Firefox, to the possible detriment of IE? Not that this means they are henceforth obligated to, but it's still interesting.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[The End Of Days]

You may see it as an attack, but it's far from obvious. You have to be pretty deep in a conspiracy mindset first.

And yeah, like the other reply says - the free OSes are handicapping themselves to serve ideals. Not the fault of the rest of the world that ideals rarely coincide with reality.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[fearlezz]

or 3) Slow down the development of a native cross-platform FF H.264 solution by making it less people depending on it. Effectively making windows a requirement to watch H.264 video's.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Woohoo! the free market wins again!

And in the future, when programming environments cost $1000 again due to monopolists forcing free software out of the market, you're going to say that it's because programmers are such a niche market and any decent programmer can make it back from shareware license fees.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[mysidia]

Writing a similar plugin for Firefox on the Mac does not make MS Office better.

Unless they develop a similar plugin for Mac, and restrict access to the plugin to Office users by distributing with Office, or requiring an activated copy of Office for the plugin to enable itself.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[westyvw]

Sigh. Were you not around when they did this crap before? They have a stake in keeping the web video codec standard as H.264. They are not interested in doing this as good design. The Anti-Microsoft bias is here for a reason, they have a long history of screwing over thier enemies and limiting thier own customers choices as a consequence.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, if Microsoft can keep people using H.264 users will be stuck on Windows OS. WebM and Flash are available on Linux. H.264 is unlikely to be "officially" available on Linux in the near future due to patent concerns.

This is a smart move by Microsoft to help encourage users to stay away from Linux.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[westyvw]

No I should be pissed. I should be pissed because they are trying to set a standard to maximize thier stranglehold on a pay to play codec. You can bable all you want about markets and costs and why doesnt someone pay up and blah blah blah. I look at it this way: Microsoft has a fancy little mathmatical formula. Thats nice, how about we all use this neat little formula? After all, like all math it was built on the backs of others? Since we live in a silly world that can claim exclusive rights to little formulas we have to argue that its worthwhile to not play with those that dont like to share interesting mathmatical descoveries, and we stick to our own. And thats the issue, a effort by them to lock in a codec to eliminate other possibilities.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[Lonewolf666]

That sort of silent plugin installation was my reason to switch off auto-update and get the most important patches via http://www.wsusoffline.net/ instead.

Microsoft patching the OS is necessary and welcome, but Firefox is an application and I'm managing the applications on my machine. Microsoft interfering with those is NOT welcome.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[hairyfeet]

You're right of course, because MSFT completely owns H.264 and is using its dominance to....oh wait a tick, that's MPEG-LA. Oh well then they are using their complete stranglehold on the video player market...nope, that's Adobe. Well then they designed all the GPUs to...nope, that's ATI and Nvidia. starting to see a pattern here friend?

I mean here you are along with waaay too many FOSSies getting your panties so twisted they could be used to power fricking windmills when what we are seeing here is a classic case of a company giving their customers what they want. Oh the horror, all my videos are unskippy and don't suck my battery dry, how ever will I cope? And the really sad part? There is absolutely nothing stopping a Linux distro from giving the customer what they want but the simple fact is FOSSies treat it as a religion instead of an OS.

You see you do NOT want to give the customer what they want, because they might want to do things differently than you. They may not give a shit about "free as in freedom man! Fight the power!" and instead just want their videos unskippy, their drivers to drive, and their MP3s to play. Instead you say "Here, here is Vorbis! It is free as in freedom, so convert all your media!" while ignoring the fact that it is crap compared to what is already out there and conversion is a PITA. Now we see the same damn thing in streaming video, with the FOSS group backing a dead horse named WebM that is a couple of years too late and a dollar short.

But that is okay, you are free to sit and complain how the entire planet won't suddenly embrace YOUR way of doing things, it is a free country. Feel free to claim as you do in your post that "MSFT has a fancy little mathematical formula" while ignoring the fact that it is actually the USPTO that gave the rights to MPEG-LA to that math, and how they should instead steal the codec from MPEG-LA to give to FOSS just so FOSSies, who has been so loving to them in the past, will be happy.. If you want your OS to not play H.264, if you want your browser to suck power and be less efficient because MPEG-LA won't give you free unlimited rights just because you're "free as in freedom"? Again that is YOUR CHOICE. Meanwhile the rest of us will quite enjoy our smoother video and less power suckage, thanks. I am typing this on Windows 7 while several vids play in the background and you know what? Smooth as butter and isn't slamming my CPU. Life is about choices, don't get all bent out of shape when others choose to go a different route. That's capitalism, and Linux distros are free to buy any codec they please. If they choose not to that doesn't mean the rest of us should have to deal with it.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[tenchikaibyaku]

Whether I'm the "pissed" communist you want to paint me as or not I will leave to another debate, my point is simply that I see this more as a way of forcing mozilla to give up their stance than a way to improve the experience for Windows 7 users. If their priorities were different, I'm pretty sure Microsoft would be happy to use this leverage to get more people to switch to Internet Explorer instead.

Also, this doesn't just affect distributions. It basically means that anyone who wants to distribute a full browser needs to pay pretty expensive royalties, which would mean that in practice it would be limited to those who have enough money to pay for one.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[makomk]

You're right! Not being able to ship a completely free operating systems affect Windows 7 users......uhhh, how exactly does this affect Windows 7 users again?

It affects Windows 7 users by adding another obstacle to them switching to (for example) Linux or even Mac, ensuring that they have to continue buying Windows and increasing the amount Microsoft can get away with charging them for it.

Remember that OEM versions of Windows are tied to the hardware on which they're sold, and hardware fails - which means buying another Windows license.

Also, distro developers couldn't "just as easily buy the rights to the H.264 codec as MSFT did", because the only reason h.264 is so cheap for Microsoft is because they're an absolutely massive organisation - and even then Microsoft were reluctant to pay out for it until they needed a way of convincing people to leave Windows XP.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[tenchikaibyaku]

I'm usually not the one to buy into any conspiracy theories, but in the case of Microsoft I make exceptions drawn from experience. :-P

I simply don't quite buy the "it makes Windows 7 better"-argument. Why would they not simply be happy to use the lack of H.264-support as a way to get people to use Internet Explorer instead?

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[John Betonschaar]

or 3) Slow down the development of a native cross-platform FF H.264 solution by making it less people depending on it. Effectively making windows a requirement to watch H.264 video's.

Maybe you missed something but Firefox doesn't want a native cross-platform FF H.264 solution, because that would mean they would have to pony up licensing fees. So instead of going with the somewhat less 'ideal' -but pragmatic- solution of providing plugins/extensions that use available OS codecs for the most-used platforms that firefox runs on, they choose to not support H264 at all, and hope that even though the whole world already moved on some day all of a sudden Theora or VP8 will be the de-facto standard codec. Effectively marginalizing the usefulness of their browser on the major platforms (Windows, OS X, Linux) that all have H264 codecs available and together cover about 98% of all computer users who want to play browser video.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[John Betonschaar]

H.264 is unlikely to be "officially" available on Linux in the near future due to patent concerns.

That's funny because Chrome on Linux plays H264, every major distribution has ffmpeg in their mainline repositories, and the Linux nvidia drivers implement a fully hardware accelerated H264 decoding pipeline. By your logic it would bee 'unlikely that ffmpeg or the nvidia drivers will be 'officially' available on Linux in the near future', while in reality, they have been for years. Did you know jpeg and RSA also have patent concerns? And what makes you think VP8 or WebM don't infringe on any h64 patents? Did you ever use the Flash plugin on Linux? On my Atom-based HTPC it can't even play SD video because it doesn't use GPU acceleration at all.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[makomk]

You're right of course, because MSFT completely owns H.264 and is using its dominance to....oh wait a tick, that's MPEG-LA. Oh well then they are using their complete stranglehold on the video player market...nope, that's Adobe.

I'm sure Microsoft would rather lock everyone into their own VC-1 codec, but fortunately that's not supported by enough other browsers for them to do it. (In particular, it's not supported by Chrome, or by Safari on Mac OS or the iPhone.)

Feel free to claim as you do in your post that "MSFT has a fancy little mathematical formula" while ignoring the fact that it is actually the USPTO that gave the rights to MPEG-LA to that math, and how they should instead steal the codec from MPEG-LA to give to FOSS

There are other codecs that don't have the licensing restrictions that h.264 has - for example, WebM. Microsoft has deliberately decided they won't be supported out the box - apparently Microsoft have no interest in making it easy for their users to play web video when it's in a format that doesn't pose legal problems for FOSS software.

Which, of course, leads me to the other issue - the reason h.264 is so widely used isn't because it's some super-clever format that the MPEG-LA deserve lots of money for (though it is quite clever, even if some stuff is included solely because it's covered by MPEG-LA members' patents). It's because it's so widely used. Microsoft's move ensures that h.264 will be the only video format available everywhere, the format that everyone will use on the Web because they have to... and Microsoft's biggest fear, Linux, can't play because it can't pay.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[Lonewolf666]

Lets be honest folks: Nobody is holding a gun to the distro developers and saying "You are NOT allowed to buy any codecs, you commie punks!". They could just as easily buy the rights to the H.264 codec as MSFT did. But they don't want to because they want to be "free as in beer and freedom man!" and you know what? That is just lovely.

The big problem is that the "free as in freedom" means that the distros would have to grant the rights to redistribute h.264 to their customers as well.
Quoting section 7 of the GPLv2 which AFAIK covers most of Linux:

7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

So if one Linux distro gets the rights to distribute while allowing royalty-free redistribution, soon all of them would redistribute the piece of code that handles h.264 for free.

Of course, the MPEG-LA knows this too and that's why the price would be quite high. It would amount to buying out the patents to h.264 and I don't think any existing Linux distributor can afford that.

Long term, I guess the expiration of the patents in question will solve the problem. But in the mean time, we'll have several more years of somehow needing to get around stuff like h.264 :-(

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

you work in Microsoft's marketing department or what???

Take a bit of time and analyse all the lock-ins Microsoft has tried to put in place over the years.

Look at how they tried to force on us poor standards like .wav .avi, etc ... can't blame them for trying, but what's annoying is when they put lock-ins in place, such as windows media player only ripping to mp3 format after you've hit it hard on the head.

with all their lock-ins, you get people using Microsoft products just because they have no other choice (people sending them documents that need Microsoft OS to display properly). It would be all good if Microsoft played fair and disclosed their file formats, but it generally needs a long trial before Microsoft is forced to do that.

I use Microsoft, Linux, Android, Apple daily. I'm fine with the differences between them. Just don't like it when one of those OS vendors doesn't play it fair

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[mpcooke3]

Don't forget H.264 is a proprietary, patent encumbered video codec and Microsoft directly profits from this as a member of the MPEGLA licensing pool.
One should view this in the perspective of a larger effort by key MPEGLA members (notably, Apple and Microsoft) attempting to stop the adoption of an open and relatively patent free video codec becoming a web standard in HTML5. Many measures are being applied including the usual FUD about any competing open codecs.

Competing browsers manufacturers / platforms are trying to avoid patent problems and proprietary technology and keep the web open (Mozilla, Opera) whilst Microsoft and Apple are trying to extend HTML with Patent encumbered formats (in which they have a financial interest!) which if they get heavily adopted will mean their browser/platforms will have a commercial advantage over competitors that are sticking to the open and patent free standards.

Of course it's in Microsoft's interests to push easy playback of the proprietary H.264 format on it's Desktop computer monopoly! Microsoft directly profit from H.264 becoming the HTML5 default format as they are still charging licensing fees related to aspects of the H.264 ecosystem *and* they get more lock-in to the windows platform making it harder for competitors to break the monopoly.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[ardeez]

It could also be a comment to their own customers ...

GET OFF OF WINXP ALREADY, FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST!! IT DOESN'T EVEN SUPPORT H.264!
WIN7 DOES! EVEN FOR YOUR LEGACY FAVOURED BROWSER!

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[thegarbz]

Yes because choice and competitors dancing happily side by side is exactly what we want. Hint for you, the former is pointless in a world where there is a dominant media format, the latter is an oligopoly.

I love open source as much as the next slashdotter, but I praise Microsoft for this. When world + dog is trying to drive a web that is based on one video codec be it closed or open source, I as a consumer don't care. ... Actually I take that back, I care very much. I am actually rather pissed, half the web is moving forward and my favourite browser is stuck in the dark ages because some programmers seem to suddenly think that using operating system APIs and frameworks is a bad thing.

I don't care if microsoft does this for nefarious reasons. I don't care if it causes WebM to get buried. I DO care about moving forward rather than having corporate pissing matches at the user's expense. Ultimately even if they're not interested in doing this as a good design, it IS a good design. The OS has a massive media framework built within it. It's about bloody time people use it, and now they can. ... Wait mozilla now supports H264, how does that limit my choice again compared to earlier?

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[clone52431]

This new plug-in, known as the HTML5 Extension for Windows Media Player Firefox Plug-in, is available for download

UGH. Never mind, no thanks. H.264 can’t persuade me to install the Windows Media Player plugin.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

and doesn't depend on any legally dubious patented stuff.

Um, if MS ships it as part of the OS then you have a license to use it. Any software which uses the OS to handle the H.264 codec instantly gets around 99% of the legal problems caused by the DMCA since your software is no longer bypassing the encryption or using someone's patented methods.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[rjstanford]

Happily, browser users on all platforms will be able to view WebM video content without any plugin.

The very first hardware video decode accelerators for WebM/VP8 are just beginning to appear on the market.

The good news for those of us who don't replace our computers every few weeks is that almost every computer made in the last few years can effectively play H.264 video with hardware acceleration, using the codecs installed into almost every single consumer operating system already. The fact that Firefox doesn't want to trust the OS (at this point I'm a little surprised they're not working on their own printer drivers, it'd be just as moronic) shouldn't become their users' problem.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[Tim C]

There are other codecs that don't have the licensing restrictions that h.264 has - for example, WebM. Microsoft has deliberately decided they won't be supported out the box - apparently Microsoft have no interest in making it easy for their users to play web video when it's in a format that doesn't pose legal problems for FOSS software.

I use both XP Home and Windows 7 Home Premium, and have had no problems whatsoever playing any video on any website that I've tried. Where are these problems that you speak of?

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[Rockoon]

Look at how they tried to force on us poor standards like .wav

You shouldnt lead off with a great standard.

What is a better uncompressed standard? Really. Lets hear it.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[interval1066]

I'm going to disagree with that statement. If the hardware can run NT 4, it can run XP just fine. 95/98? I'm not even going to dignify that with a response. 95/98 are completely different operating systems from NT on up.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Garbage.

Microsoft did Firefox a big favor by enabling h.264 playback on a browser which DIRECTLY COMPETES WITH THEIR BROWSER. They helped Firefox out without it hurting Firefox in any conceivable way. That's it.

Yes, this helps h.264 proliferate, and yes, this is (to an extent) in MSFT's interest. Do you really, REALLY think MSFT is going to be grievously hurt if h.264 WASN'T the dominant force? Because THAT's what is keeping Linux from world domination, right?

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[plcurechax]

or 3) Slow down the development of a native cross-platform FF H.264 solution by making it less people depending on it. Effectively making windows a requirement to watch H.264 video's.

Also it is another benefit for Microsoft users who upgrade (from Windows XP primarily) to Windows 7. With Windows 7 Microsoft is truly competing with itself, in so much as they are having trouble with previous customers (ie. coporate IT departments) not embracing an major OS upgrade to Microsoft's bread and butter desktop (& laptop) Operating System. The home users will be "forced" through the upgrade hassle simply by the churning of home PC hardware, and the predominance of pre-installed OSes.

If a home user is savy enough to install a different OS on their home system, then they are 75% likely to go with an alternative OS (MacinHack, Linux, *BSD) as upgrade OS versions. (My purely speculative estimate)

But if upgrading to Windows 7 is forced by corporate IT's slow embrace of PC video (tele-conferencing and distance education / training are the two major areas I've personally seen it be a factor) means that is one more reason for IT departments to justify the cost of upgrading to Windows 7 (well, if the C-levels want desktop HD video conferencing, "we need to upgrade our desktop infrastructure to get the best streaming / live video experience without overloading our networking infrastructure") that is one of the few visual justification to the C-levels of return on investment.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[hairyfeet]

Hell did you read his post? It was one horribly bad example after another! The first was wav, which as you noted and I agree completely is a bloody brilliant format. I record on a 16 track digistudio and then manipulate on my PC, and wav is wonderful. Its low CPU overhead allows me to seriously manipulate without needing a monster PC.

Then we have avi, which as many here like to point out is a container and wasn't made popular by MSFT at all, unless you call getting hacked and ripped off by the early DivX 3 "making popular". Again it was a great format as it was quite easy to encode a video to DivX 5 without huge overhead. I still use it for my mom's old DVD player, makes great videos.

Finally we have WMP defaulting to WMA, which the poster conveniently ignores the fact that at the time period that WMA was default (2001-2007) huge fat HDDs was NOT the norm, and in fact most machines came with 40-80GB drives. Now if some have forgotten allow me to just remind you that WMA makes better quality at lower file sizes than ANY other audio codec. Look up the numbers yourself, a 96Kb WMA was closer to a 160Kb MP3 which meant the users of those PCs with small hard drives could actually have a decent collection without sucking up all their space. Oh, the horror, the agony! Giving their customers a nice experience, those bastards! And it wasn't like it was trivial to change a single setting and have it default to MP3...oh wait a tick, yes it was. It took all of 3 seconds and any fool with access to Google could switch to MP3, no registry editing or nothing, just use the bloody GUI!

To me it just shows the fanatical religious aspect of FOSSies. You see they are ALL for freedom as long as freedom means free to do things THEIR WAY and their way alone. It reminds me of those "we know what's best" types, where they treat you as an idiot or some sort of enemy if you dare to have a thought that doesn't agree with theirs. I repeat, it is a capitalist society and Linux developers are free to buy ANY codecs they want and include it in their distros. Nobody is holding a gun to their heads and saying "No codecs for you, filthy commies!". But if they exercise their free choice not to purchase codecs for THEIR OS does NOT give them the right to dictate what others do or don't purchase for their own. This is a classic case of "I can't have it, so you can't either!" only nobody is forcing them not to purchase as they can't even claim they aren't supported when there are plenty willing to sell them H.264 codecs like Fluendo.

They simply refuse to purchase because they are "free as in freedom and beer man!" and then get pissed because the world won't go "cool man, here take all this free stuff!". MPEG-LA says you pay if you want to ship H.264 in an OS, MSFT and Apple paid, Linux didn't. Welcome to capitalism. Just because you are free as in beer doesn't give you the right to demand free stuff from other people.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[hairyfeet]

Do you have ANY idea how incredibly stupid and grasping at straws your post is? I mean really? That is like saying "When browsers are $500 again you'll be sorry!" Show me A SINGLE PRODUCT that started out at a price, dropped the price to zero, and then shot back up to some expensive number. You can't because they don't exist. You can get Visual Studio Express for $0, you've got Netbeans and a dozen other bloody IDEs, as many as your little FOSSie heart desires, and many if not most can be had for free. You want the features of a full VS install you pay, but if you want support in FOSS you pay, no difference there.

So how about instead you just accept the fact that because FOSS developers refuse to buy codecs to give their users a nice experience, with videos all unskippy and lower battery usage, does not mean you get to tell others that they can NOT buy those codecs because you want to be "free as in beer and freedom man!". It is a free market, and there are groups like Fluendo happy to sell codecs to Linux developers, they just ain't buying. But just because YOU give everything away for free does NOT mean everyone else has to as well. That is called having choice over one's products.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[tweak13]

...WMA makes better quality at lower file sizes than ANY other audio codec. Look up the numbers yourself, a 96Kb WMA was closer to a 160Kb MP3 ...

As someone who works with audio professionally, I can say that statement is pure marketing bullshit. A 96 kbps WMA file may have sounded better than a 96 kbps MP3 file, but both of them still sound like crap compared to a higher bitrate file. An MP3 with almost double the bitrate certainly will win in sound quality.

That statement about WMA having better low bitrate performance than ANY other codec is pretty ridiculous considering the many years of advancements made since then. AAC is probably the only codec that I actually consider usable at 96 kbps, and its performance at even lower bitrates is far, far above that of WMA.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh...did you miss this part? That at the time period that WMA was default (2001-2007) huge fat HDDs were NOT the norm. And you are looking at this from an audiophile perspective and might I remind you we are talking about audio being ripped and played on a PC here, not some digital studio. I mean sure, you rip everything to 320k MP3 or similar AAC (which I don't even think existed in 2001 when XP came out) and run it through some great speakers it'll sound head and shoulders better than WMA but you know what? That is nowhere near the default PC setup even today ,and it sure as hell wasn't the default setup in the time period we are speaking of.

So while there are plenty of things you can complain about WMA for, such as lower battery life on MP3 players, please remember both the time period and the target audience we are talking about. Those people that really care about the high fidelity at that time probably wasn't even running Windows, as most DAWs were based around OSX at the time. And in the time period we are speaking of (2001-2007) large HDDs were NOT the norm, so it really doesn't matter if you got better sound from higher bitrates because with a 40GB HDD nobody had room for the larger sizes anyway. As someone who lived through that time I can tell you MP3, WMA, and MP3 Pro were pretty much the choices you had, and MP3 Pro didn't play on anything thanks to the crazy licensing prices the group in charge of MP3 Pro wanted for support. That left WMA and MP3 and at lower bitrates WMA sounded better, especially on the speakers that most people had at the time. So while it might have been nice to have a pro audio setup then I can assure you that was NOT typical.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[Sir Homer]

We "fanatical FOSSies" are pushing towards a world where people are free to do interesting things with technology without needing permission or excessive upfront money. H.264 is not one of those technologies.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Finished your tirade yet? Let me retort then.

Hypocrite idiot. You talk about how life is about choices. I'd like to see the choices next time I walk into the computer store to buy a new laptop. I'd like to see the choice of OS's, or my option to buy it without an OS.

We have no choice, that's the point. We just take whatever comes out of MSFT. When it's something good, like actually in this case, you enjoy it and rant about people who point out that all is not well on a broader scale. On the other hand, when MSFT fucks up, you just shrug and maybe silently grind your teeth, but obediently accept it as the way of life, doing nothing about it, not even as much as complaining, which should be among our basic human rights. Yours is a prime example of sheep mentality, and you are even under the delusion that "we have choice."

It's been a long time since I saw anyone ranting directly against MSFT on Slashdot and modded up, or purely advocating for freedom and free and fair competition, which don't exist in the broad software world. In spite of this, the local hypocrites always taunt us how Slashdot is full of Linux fanboys, whereas all I can read here is just MSFT idolizing crap modded up to five stars. There, just go on and mod this comment down as troll, see if I care. It felt good to write this down, even if nobody agrees any more.

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[hairyfeet]

Hi, Mr Coward, or may I call you cow? You see Cow, some of us are willing to stand by our words instead of being little trolls hiding behind AC, and I'll even be happy to retort.

What your little "We have no choice! Waaah!" speech seems to forget is over and over the public has been GIVEN the Linux choice and thanks to decisions by the Linux devs that makes the AI in an EA game look like Stephen Hawking it has been rejected by the masses by a long shot. Walmart, Best Buy, MSI, all have sold Linux machines to the public at one time, and what did they get? An 80%+ return rate. Now I don't know if you have ever sold machines at retail like I have (doubtful) but allow me to point out that those figures mean that they lost money on 8 out of every 10 sales since those units will now have to be sold as used or refurb by state law.

But what do you expect from an OS whose leader says Linux isn't designed but instead "evolves like a virus" LOL, while sites are happy to point out what needs to be fixed, as well as guys like me, but instead will be responded to with "shill! MSFT lackey! All must love teh goodness!" like a typical nutter. Hell the fanboi bullshit is so thick in Linux land they actually have a site dedicated to listing all the different ways Linux fans spout total bullshit, instead of...ohh I don't know....actually listening to users?

Finally think about this...your old pal hairyfeet is gonna give you an example of why your OS is so low on the totem pole you brag when you reach 1% like it is an actual achievement. But of course I'm sure after a really big swig of FOSSie koolaid you'll find a way to label it a shill, or not reality, or some other BS. Be sure to pick the right TM from TM repo so we can know which BS you intend to use, okay? Here goes:

Here we have two OSes, the latest Ubuntu and Windows 7: Here is the installation of Windows 7...stick in DVD, answer three questions, the hardest of which is "are you at home or at work?" (for the network settings) and at first boot the OS will check if there is anything without drivers and pop up a little box that says "Hey, I don't have a driver for this, can I go and fetch one for you?" and if you say yes and the device is less than 5 years old (the majority of consumer gear) it WILL find a driver, install it, and off you go. It will even point out you don't have an AV and give you a page with several free ones to choose from. Hell my 67 year old dad installed Windows 7 by himself, and he still can't figure out how to work his cell phone.

Now let us compare Ubuntu, the flagship for "Linux for humans" and the supposedly easy (to the point fanbois call it dumbed down) Linux, ready? Install OS, get asked a half a dozen questions, although to be fair it is getting better in that regard. Upon first startup OS will NOT tell you if anything doesn't work because of drivers, you have to figure that out yourself. Is there a "find drivers" button, like Windows has had since 2000? Nope, because lack of a hardware ABI means that shit that worked in Ubuntu 9 will NOT work in Ubuntu 10, lovely. So AFTER you find where the fuck the version of device manager is you have to go trawl some forum (which NO user is likely to find easily since nobody puts a fucking button to it anywhere) looking for "fixes" which require you to know which firmware/hardware rev you had (yeah, good fucking luck on a user knowing THAT) and then "tweak said fix" because it was written for firmware A rev b and you have firmware d rev f (again good fucking luck). Follow that by using an interface called Bash that looks like a 1979 reject without autocomplete or spellc

Re:Sounds just like Microsoft

[makomk]

I use both XP Home and Windows 7 Home Premium, and have had no problems whatsoever playing any video on any website that I've tried.

That would be because pretty much every website you visit uses Flash, and because websites are willing to go to a lot of effort and expense to make sure their video plays on Windows under IE. If you were using the standard out-the-box configuration without Flash, video on most websites wouldn't work at all.

And everything went better than expected.

[kwabbles]

Open slashdot... see add... Microsoft releasing plugin for Firefox (huh?) open article, "oh only works on Win7"... look for reason to get angry at Microsoft... can't find any on this one, seems like a nice thing, hear a bird outside, sip my soda, nice day out.

Re:And everything went better than expected.

[rubycodez]

well, that's fine for you. but here it's a horrible day, which is normal for this season, and that damn happy bird of yours would be a frozen corpse in five minutes.

Re:And everything went better than expected.

[martin-boundary]

hear a bird outside, sip my soda, nice day out.

HE'$ TRYING TO 3SC4PE THE BASEM3NT!!1!! GET HIM!!!1111!!!!

Re:And everything went better than expected.

[TheThiefMaster]

It's been at least -13C here recently, and there are still pigeons nesting under the bloody railway bridge when I walk for lunch from work and back.

Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

But Microsoft could not afford to sign the add-on? I sure did not feel confident installing it given it's not open source is unsigned and comes from a non-microsoft.com domain. Also seems like it doesn't always work - not a huge surprise from Microsoft but I like their honesty in admitting it this time :)

Good for Them

[Tibor the Hun]

They are either realizing that either:
1. they are becoming increasingly irrelevant on the desktop as people are using mobile devices more and more for their needs (iPad/Android for email and facebook)(and Apple computer sales have been growing handsomely), and therefore need to compete for customers for the first time in 20 years, or
2. it is a good opportunity for them to pull the old Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

Only time will tell.
Now, off to RTFA.

Re:Good for Them

[bloodhawk]

Or the far more likely, They license H.264 already, they have a user base that use FF and want them to continue to use windows as their preference by ensuring they have the maximum capabilities. FFS why do the tin foil hat wearers have to come out at everything they do. This is a pretty obvious move by them that makes both business and technical sense and has nothing to do with the shit your spouting. It is all about keeping their dominate hold on the OS regardless of browser choice.

Re:Good for Them

[westlake]

they are becoming increasingly irrelevant on the desktop as people are using mobile devices more and more for their needs

Operating System Market Share

Windows 91%
OSX 5%
iOS 1.36%
Linux 0.93%
Android 0.31%
Symbian 0.26%
BlackBerry 0.11%

For the global breakdown by country and region: Mobile vs. Desktop

"9 To 5"

"7 to 11" "Do you know where your children are?"

The geek might usefully ask himself how mobile the world at work or the world at home really is. The primary use of the smartphone, after all, remains the everyday, ordinary, telephone call.

Apple computer sales have been growing handsomely

All increases in sales look phenomenal when you start from a small enough base.

2. it is a good opportunity for them to pull the old Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

The WebM video scarcely exists outside a YouTube transcode. H.264 is in a lot of places in the world beyond the web that you will find Windows. For a sampling, try Google Shopping for "H.264." 67,000 hits.

Re:Good for Them

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, off to RTFA.

Heretic, burn him !

windows 7 but need codec

[Anonymous Coward]

I have windows 7 but still need to get vlc to play h.264 movies. WHY?

Re:windows 7 but need codec

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you are doing it wrong?

Good enough?

[Khopesh]

(Speaking as a Linux user here)

This is probably "good enough" since it will apply enough pressure to get the rest of the userbase covered quickly enough. Competitive forces should drive similar efforts for GStreamer (and perhaps Phonon) and QuickTime (is that the right MacOS framework?) soon enough. The problem comes with the fact that it's almost guaranteed to be a closed application, so there's nothing to build atop except the interface and feature set.

The real question is what Google thinks of this; despite YouTube's H.264 ties, they've been pushing WebM (a simplified Matroska container holding VP8 video and Vorbis audio) in place of FLV (or...?) containing H.264 and MP3 (or AAC?). Google will have to react FAST if they want to push WebM. For the sake of free/open standards in HTML5 video, specifically to prevent license/royalty issues with proprietary codecs to let the little guys compete, I'm rooting for Google.

So when I say "good enough," I'm referring to what it might kick-start rather than the more immediate effects. Things should start to get interesting.

Re:Good enough?

[Kjella]

Competitive forces should drive similar efforts for GStreamer (and perhaps Phonon) and QuickTime (is that the right MacOS framework?) soon enough.

Firefox doesn't have a technical problem doing so, my computer plays all sorts of H.264 just fine because I have the x264 library installed. They've just consistently refused to use the system's codecs because it'd lead to a different experience depending on what OS the user is running and what he has installed, and because they can't both be open source and legally licensed at the same time they won't install it on demand either. Google has H.264 support in Chrome and I don't think they mind that much as long as they push HTML5 over flash. I think Firefox overestimate themselves on this on, they're not going to win and they're only going to lose marketshare trying. Probably to Chrome, which seems to be the "in" browser right now.

Re:Good enough?

[metamatic]

They've just consistently refused to use the system's codecs because it'd lead to a different experience depending on what OS the user is running and what he has installed

a) Most users want a different experience on the Mac to (say) the experience on Linux or Windows. b) Firefox is already a different experience on different platforms, even down to look and feel. Basically, I think their arguments for not supporting h.264 are rationalizations.

Re:Good enough?

[tumnasgt]

Mac OS 10.6 most certainly does have support for H.264 out of the box, and I imagine that 10.5 and possibly earlier versions have it as well.

I'm not usually too keen of what MS do, but I think that using the OS's native codecs makes a lot of sense, and Mozilla really need to get off their high horse and implement native plugin use for all OSes that they support. A plugin is not ideal, but it's a hell of a lot better than not having H.264 support in Firefox, hopefully Mozilla will look at this and decide it is something that should be built in to their browser.

Re:Good enough?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Guess what? This isn't about users and codec battles, or offering firefox anything. Windows has h.264 hardware support out the box, OS X and Linux do not.

I guess I don't understand what you mean by that. Out of the box? On Windows you need to install a plug-in to get Firefox to use h264. The OS, of course supports hardware accelerated h264 and provides an API to third parties to use on Windows 7, but then OS X provides VDADecoder for the same purpose and, of course, uses it in Safari. Ditto for most Linux configurations as I understand, via Purevideo/XBMC.

So I guess my question for you is, "how does Windows support h264 out of the box, more than other OS's?"

Re:Good enough?

[tumnasgt]

I meant native codecs, not native plugins.

Re:Good enough?

[dingen]

Windows has h.264 hardware support out the box, OS X and Linux do not.

Mac OS X does. Flash and XMBC among others use it.

Re:Good enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty transparent what they're doing here. Microsoft has always pushed h.264 over webm. They want h.264 to become the de facto standard for web video so they want to get it on as many browsers as possible. As long as IE doesn't support webm and all browsers support h.264 they'll probably win.

Re:Good enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically, I think their arguments for not supporting h.264 are rationalizations.

So what could be Mozilla's "real" motive?

Re:Good enough?

[moonbender]

I know I'm probably responding to a troll, but for the record, hardware video (including H.264) acceleration is supported on Linux desktop via VDPAU/VA API. I can't vouch for the Intel/ATI VA API, but VDPAU has worked fine for me. Playing back a 1080p H.264 file has basically no impact on system load.

Re:Good enough?

[h4rr4r]

Chrome plugins are so limited in availability and what they can do it cannot replace firefox for many.

More likely is interested users make plugins like this one for the platforms they use.

Re:Good enough?

[SplashMyBandit]

I use Firefox regularly on a Mac (typing now), Win7 and Linux is pretty much the same experience. The differences are pretty much negligible because you spend your time looking inside the window rather than at the menu bar or outside the frame. But yes, the arguments are rationalizations of decisions made mostly by instinct.

Re:Good enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

my computer plays all sorts of H.264 just fine because I have the x264 library installed

This is just nitpicking, but your computer plays because you probably have some version of ffmpeg, or more specifically libavcodec installed. libx264 only does encoding and can't be used to watch stuff.

They've just consistently refused to use the system's codecs because it'd lead to a different experience depending on what OS the user is running and what he has installed, and because they can't both be open source and legally licensed at the same time they won't install it on demand either.

They can have a licensed open source H.264 encoder. They can't have one that is redistributable, so I guess the GPL is out. There are legally licensed binary H.264 decoders for all platforms, and for Windows XP and newer, as well as OS X, there are free (gratis) licensed decoders available. Mozilla could point the user to those if the decoder is needed. Apart from the availability issue I don't really see a problem. Unlike some formats like MPEG4 ASP (DivX/XviD) there is only one correct way to decode H.264, so the only difference between decoders should be performance and they are all pretty mature these days. Apart from that practically every GPU released less than 2 or 3 years ago comes with a hardware decoder that can be accessed for free.

Re:Good enough?

[jo_ham]

Goodness me, no wonder you posted AC. OS X definitely has hardware decoding support for H.264 as well as full software decoding support out of the box. 5 seconds on google would have confirmed that. It also comes with Quicktime 7 (at a minimum - Quicktime X in 10.6) that have a full set of modern codecs of various flavours out of the box - H.264 being among them.

Not only that, it ships with an H.264 *encoder* too as well as just a decoder (yes, yes, I am aware that the term "codec" is a combination of both terms).

There's no reason that firefox couldn't use these codecs provided by QuickTime very trivially - they choose not to for ideological reasons, which I have no problem with them taking.

Re:Good enough?

[josath]

Microsoft has always pushed h.264? Ever heard of WMV?

Re:Good enough?

[stms]

Or if you wanted to go open-source/cross-platform in a single plug-in you could use mplayer or vlc.

Re:Good enough?

[h4rr4r]

You don't see the problem?
You don't see how there is no decoder that matches the MPL could be an issue?

The law needs changed, I should not have to pay rent to decode a file or to show others how to do so.

Re:Good enough?

[icebraining]

They can have a licensed open source H.264 encoder. They can't have one that is redistributable, so I guess the GPL is out.

_Any_ license to be called open source must allow redistribution. BSD, MIT, Apache, all of them allow redistribution. The difference between those and the GPL is that the latter forces distributors of binaries containing GPL code to distribute the sources too, but they all allow redistribution.

Re:Good enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I don't see a problem. If you use the system codecs framework or hardware decoding you are not implementing the decoder yourself and you can use any license you want. If you want to distribute a decoder you can do that as a binary plugin and leave the source under any license that doesn't force you to own the patents. While I don't know how much true to the spirit of the license it is there are plenty (L)GPL licensed codecs for patented formats, for instance ffmpeg or x264.

I am against software patents, but that isn't the main issue here, since it is easy to work around them. Furthermore with H.264 you don't pay to decode the file or tho show others how to do so. Source code can be distributed without any regard to patents and the MPEG-LA doesn't collect fees for use. They collect fees for the distribution of decoders and encoders, and for payed distribution of files as well as broadcasts.

Re:Good enough?

[h4rr4r]

Charging for distribution of a decoder is paying to decode the file.

Re:Good enough?

[The End Of Days]

In a word, idealism.

Ideals rarely make sense to people who don't share them, so defending them appears to be rationalization in that context.

Re:Good enough?

[Thundersnatch]

...specifically to prevent license/royalty issues with proprietary codecs to let the little guys compete, I'm rooting for Google.

The problem is, Google brought a knife to a gun fight. The latest VP8 encoder still needs at least 50% more bits than the best H.264 encoders to achieve the same quality. I don't know of too many content producers willing to increase their CDN bill by 50% each month to save on H.264 license fees. H.264 is an open standard, widely deployed, has hardware support, and is technically superior to VP8. It will always be better, as i don't expect a 50% improvement feom VP8 encoders as they evolve. That's tough to overcome. Vorbis could not overcome the popularity of MP3 even though it was at least as good at a technical level.

Re:Good enough?

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

H264 requires licensing.

So its dead in the water on true free software systems.

Re:Good enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

The real question is what Google thinks of this; despite YouTube's H.264 ties, they've been pushing WebM (a simplified Matroska container holding VP8 video and Vorbis audio) in place of FLV (or...?) containing H.264 and MP3 (or AAC?)

Sigh.

This isn't hard: Flash supports 2 (TWO) video formats:
MPEG4 (.mp4) containing H.264 video and an AAC or MP3 audio track
FLV (.flv) containing H.263 (aka VP3) and MP3
[FLV also supports some homebrew video formats and Nellymoser audio but nobody uses those]

For background: FLV was added in Flash7 IIRC, MP4 was added in Flash8 which is why a lot of sites (like Youtube) have a backlog of FLV files despite using mainly MP4 for newer ones.

Re:Good enough?

[makomk]

Out of the box? On Windows you need to install a plug-in to get Firefox to use h264.

Until Microsoft goes and rolls out that plugin to every Windows 7 system via Windows Update, like they did with their previous Firefox plugins.

Re:Good enough?

[rjstanford]

Hell, OSX was one of the initial champions of H.264 in the consumer video space - I still remember a Keynote from way back when showing... I think it was the Incredibles... playing in full 1920x1080 in H.264 format. At the time it was revolutionary

Re:Good enough?

[rjstanford]

They can have a licensed open source H.264 encoder.

The real problem, as you seem to be wandering towards, is that they shouldn't have one - they shouldn't even try to be providing their own video decoders, any more than they should be providing their own printer drivers. That's the job of the OS, allowing the user (or the distribution) a central place to install and maintain all video codecs (and printer drivers) and giving all applications full access to them. Unless they refuse to look there and just say, "HP LaserJet - er - H.264? Never heard of it, so no printing - er, video playback - for you!"

Re:Good enough?

[Thundersnatch]

Apparently you missed my Vorbis/MP3 comparison. MP3 was "dead in the water" on free software platforms, too. But that didn't matter at all, and Vorbis never seriously threatened MP3 as the de-facto audio file format standard.

What will continue to happen is that free software users will download open source H.264 software as they already do, and not pay any licensing fees (even if they are required to in their jurisdiction). This is the same situation as with MP3 and audio, except the "free" video solution is far worse in terms of technical quality compared with the patented solution. So there is even less incentive to use the unencumbered solution. So H.264 will still dominate.

Unless there is a VP9 or something that leapfrogs H.264 in quality, this will not change. The MPEG-LA is smart enough to know that keeping reasonably low fees will prevent other solutions from taking hold in the marketplace. For example, they made it free to transmit H.264 to end-users who aren't paying, and have caps so that the costs for big players aren't a concern.

Re:Good enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

a) Most users want a different experience on the Mac to (say) the experience on Linux or Windows.

Not in terms of which websites work and which don't.

MacOS X

[Midnight Thunder]

Given that Quicktime supports H.264, has anyone else looked into getting Firefox to use that for MP4/H264 playback, via a plugin in MacOS X?

BTW I am assuming we are talking about the video tag and not MP4/H264 in a embed/object tag?

Re:MacOS X

[jo_ham]

There's nothing stopping them - QuickTime on the Mac is a well documented system. The Mac version of XBMC uses it for just that reason, for example. It should be trivial for firefox to do the same if they wanted.

What's In A Name?

[dorath]

This new plug-in, known as the HTML5 Extension for Windows Media Player Firefox Plug-in

It's not a catchy name, but at least it's descriptive.

Re:What's In A Name?

[jo_ham]

This is from the company that called a product "Bob" and decided that the best colour for a media player was shit brown.

They do make good mice though.

Re:What's In A Name?

[korgitser]

Microsoft never just names anything (whether descriptive or not). Remember what the PHB said: "the name is the most important part of the project". This particular name is meant to tell the average user that she should not really try to understand what it is, but she definitely needs it.

Re:What's In A Name?

[trickyD1ck]

Isn't the average user a "he"?

What was the advantage of HTML5 and video?

[devent]

To watch a video now I need the Flash plugin. To watch a video in HTML5 with the awesome video tags I need a FF plugin. Nothing really changed, does it? Instead they (the W3C) could have set a standard video codec so we don't need any plugins anymore and would have an addons free WWW.

Re:What was the advantage of HTML5 and video?

[h4rr4r]

What codec could they have picked?
WebM was not around, setting a standard that FREE software cannot use is no good, and h264 is what Apple and MS wanted.

Re:What was the advantage of HTML5 and video?

[BZ]

They tried to set a standard video codec.

Opera and Gecko refused to implement one of the possible contenders (H.264) for patent reasons. Furthermore, H.264 doesn't comply with the spirit of the W3C patent policy, though it does comply with the letter (because while a W3C spec can't require implementation of a W3C-designed techonlogy that has W3C members holding patents on it and not licensing them, it _can_ require implementation of a patented technology developed by someone else, via citing it by reference).

Apple refused to implement anything other than H.264.

Microsoft refused to comment, basically.

Google implemented H.264 and the other containers+codecs Gecko and Opera implement (WebM/VP8 and Ogg/Theora).

So anything that was going to be specified was going to be a fiction in practice....

Re:What was the advantage of HTML5 and video?

[h4rr4r]

Gecko did not refuse, it could not implement 264 and be legal.

Re:What was the advantage of HTML5 and video?

[BZ]

Whatever their reasons (and I know what they are, yes, and agree with them), the upshot was that they said they would not implement it. So it was DOA for standardization.

Re:What was the advantage of HTML5 and video?

[Anonymous Coward]

What codec could they have picked?
WebM was not around, setting a standard that FREE software cannot use is no good, and h264 is what Apple and MS wanted.

h264 may well have been what Apple and MS wanted, but h264 does not comply with W3C patent policy.

http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/

Now that there is WebM available, that is a codec that has equivalent performance to h264 and it DOES comply with W3C patent policy.

h264 does not charge video consumers, but it does charge royalties to video providers.

Using WebM as the codec will save significant costs for many millions of people. Why not specify WebM for HTML5? It is the right thing to do now.

Re:What was the advantage of HTML5 and video?

[Eskarel]

As to what the advantage was, there wasn't really one, W3C, like always, is just trying to standardize things that have been common practice for years, they're not exactly cutting edge sadly. You won't even see a dramatic shift to HTML5 for video because it doesn't allow the publisher to control distribution(neither does flash but it lets them pretend it does). HTML5 doesn't support DRM and while for many people that's a plus it makes it DOA for quite a number of uses.

As for codec standardization. WebM didn't exist when the standards were created and doesn't look to be either substantially better than H.264 or provably unencumbered by patents even if it had been. Theora sucks balls and the same potential patent issues as WebM, since Firefox refused to use the OS codec, and couldn't or wouldn't license H.264 itself no standard was possible.

Re:What was the advantage of HTML5 and video?

[Eskarel]

Because the specification is complete, you'll have to wait for HTML6 in 2030 for that.

Re:What was the advantage of HTML5 and video?

[Tim C]

And they couldn't provide a plugin to allow the browser to use whatever codec was installed on the host OS because..?

Re:What was the advantage of HTML5 and video?

[petermgreen]

They did actually specify theora initially but they removed that in later drafts when apple and nokia refused to implement it. H.264 has patent problems which make it unusable for a standard which is supposed to be freely implementable. If google can convince the other major browser vendors to accept webm then I think it's likely the w3c will codify it's use as the baseline codec in the standard (remember HTML5 is STILL a draft standard).

You seem to think the w3c has more power than they actually do. They can't actually force vendors to implement anything.

Cool story bro!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I've read about half the comments, and so far the general sentiment of the FOSStard community to my understanding is this:

- Microsoft should have written an h.264 plugin for Firefox on Linux and OS-X.
- It's typical of Microsoft to do something like this and not support XP.

- Etc.

Here's the deal, guys:
H.264 support is not "built into" Windows 7. It's built into Windows Media Player 12. That version shipped with and is exclusive to Windows 7. It can't be installed to XP. Microsoft has previously released a Firefox plugin that enabled some older version of Windows Media Player to run an instance within Firefox. There are some sites out there that use old IE-only extensions to play video and they embed an instance of Windows Media Player directly into the browser window. The old Windows Media Player Firefox extension only enabled Firefox to support this garbage.

Now they have released an updated plugin based on Windows Media Player 12 that (not surprisingly) only runs on Windows 7. Since it's based on Windows Media Player 12, it supports H.264. It probably is even neater now since it interprets HTML5 tags and automatically invokes. It's not just for embedded Windows Media Player crap anymore.

Re:Cool story bro!

[Spy Handler]

is that you Bill? How's Melinda doing these days?

Thanks for the informative post... although that FOSStard bit was a little over the top

Re:Cool story bro!

[dingen]

Well, I've read about half the comments, and so far the general sentiment of the FOSStard community to my understanding is this:

- Microsoft should have written an h.264 plugin for Firefox on Linux and OS-X

Which half would that be? I've read all of the comments and found nobody actually saying this is what Microsoft should have done.

Windows 7?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Earth 0

End of first half.

MS backs H.264 over WebM

[Khopesh]

Microsoft has always pushed h.264? Ever heard of WMV?

It is my recollection that MS has "always" pushed H.264 over WebM since such a stance can only have existed after WebM's introduction, which is pretty recent. WMV uses VC-1 (a MS proprietary codec written into the BluRay standard) and so is somewhat of a contender, but it's a bit behind VP8 (used by WebM, patents released into public domain), H.264 (preferred by YouTube in FLV containers, patent-encumbered), and Dirac (a candidate for VC-2, preferred by BBC, patent-free). See also Wikipedia's Comparison of H.264 and VC-1.

Re:Sounds just like [insert company name here]

[NemoinSpace]

they're only doing it to benefit themselves.

No kidding?

except no one is buying windows 7

[chronoss2010]

those that are are well.....nvm....

Useless

[Saint Stephen]

Installed it; went to Microsoft's very own HTML 5 page; it wouldn't play (readme warned me about this) even though it could (detection failed)

Googled "h264 html5 video demo" -> absolutely nothing worked or did anything

Gave up; uninstalled it. Useless alpha technology. Thanks HTML5!

Re:Useless

[arose]

And that is part of the reason Mozilla isn't doing it, they don't want to deal with all the integration issues, OS provided codec flakiness, missing codecs, etc. They very much strive to provide a turnkey browser without optional might work if you are lucky components. That's what add-ons are for and Microsoft covering their platform is really the ideal solution in this case.

Re:Useless

[Dr. Spork]

What are you talking about? I'm not missing any codecs, most certainly not the h264 codec. I really want this functionality and not having it is something that might get me to give up on Firefox. Just like the grandparent, I also installed the plugin, restarted Firefox and tried to test things - and got nothing. I'm using Win7-64 and my codecs are most certainly in order. What's going on?

Re:Useless

[arose]

What are you talking about?

About why Mozilla decided not to ship Firefox that heavily depends on external components.

I'm not missing any codecs, most certainly not the h264 codec.

I listed it among things that can go wrong if they did, I certainly did not say that the cause got OPs and your problems was simultaneously "integration issues, OS provided codec flakiness, missing codecs, etc." and I have no idea why you decided I did.

What's going on?

It's for Microsoft to sort out, not for Mozilla (and certainly not me) that was one of my points.

Allow to help with your confusion ...

[Zero__Kelvin]

"All too often, the anti-Microsoft bias here is far too little!"

Your Slashdot User # suggests you don't know the history. You should listen to the old timers and learn something. Seriously.

Re:Allow to help with your confusion ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you read a digit twice or something? His UID is just about 20% higher than yours.

Anyone who accuses slashdot of being too sympathetic to Microsoft is living in a fantasy world.

Re:Allow to help with your confusion ...

[Zero__Kelvin]

Yes I did, which is funny because I was trying to be less abrasive, but now in retrospect I should have pointed out that the complete idiocy of his statement was the actual indication that you both are clueless (assuming you are not the same person, of course.)

Re:Allow to help with your confusion ...

[Tim C]

My UID is 1/10th yours, and frankly the anti-MS hysteria on here does get pretty old at times.

Yes, they did some pretty shitty things in the past. No, not everything they do nowadays is whiter-than-white either. However they have shown a vast improvement in all areas, to the extent that they're really no worse (or better) than any other large tech company, including IBM, Google and Apple.

But no, Slashdot is still full of BSOD jokes, security misinformation and Netscape-killer references (irritating since Netscape effectively committed suicide).

Re:Allow to help with your confusion ...

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy is a troll, quit wasting your time.

Re:Allow to help with your confusion ...

[Zero__Kelvin]

Well, reasonable people can agree to disagree. Luckily, that wasn't necessary in this case. Numerous very intelligent and reasonable people all got together and were in complete agreement: It's official. You're a moron. *

* Mods take note before modding me down (don't mod him down either.) The above is a copy of Tim C's sig line at the time of this writing, in case he changes it. I have changed "most of you" indicating all of us to "you" indicating him.

Web video in the break room

[tepples]

How many h264 videos you watching at work?

Plenty in the break room. But some companies have a policy to install the same image on the break room PC that gets loaded onto the work PCs.

Embrace, Extend, EXTINGUISH!!!!

[electrosoccertux]

Microsoft is first embracing Firefox (wait what?) then EXTENDING with extension AND NEXT THEY WILL EXTINGUISH IT!!!!ONE

?

The Adventures of... "CaPTaiN PaRaNoiD" part #1

[Anonymous Coward]

So in effect, to use said extension, you will need to either:

a) Upgrade your XP/Vista box to Windows 7
b) Say goodbye to your Mac
c) Ditch your *nix distro

I can't really see many people doing that. However for anybody using the operating system, it's really not such a bad idea. While the idea of Microsoft developing a Firefox extension may turn heads, they're only doing it to benefit themselves. by dust11 (895301) ALIAS "CaPTaiN PaRaNoiD"
on Thursday December 16, @05:44PM (#34581092) Homepage

See subject.

You'd be wrong..

[Anonymous Coward]

Its most probably because of lawyers.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2008/05/14/8502228.aspx

The Adventures of... "CaPTaiN PaRaNoiD" part #2

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't view the plugin as an enhancement for Firefox. View it as an extension for Windows 7 - it's increasing compatibility with a certain feature. And then, it all makes sense - it's Microsoft's business to improve Windows, and now Firefox is getting a free boost on that platform. by gman003 (1693318)
on Thursday December 16, @05:52PM (#34581222) ALIAS "CaPTaiN PaRaNoiD"

See subject.

Hasnt someone done this before

[Anonymous Coward]

aha... bundling windows with firefox... good idea ?

What we REALLY wanted...

[Joce640k]

What we really wanted was a way to let video stay fullscreen on a second monitor without having to re-hexedit the flash dll every time it gets updated or overwritten.

The first browser to manage that staggeringly complex feat of engineering will be the one I'll use.

callus disregard for what mozilla is trying to do

[bigmammoth]

I am surprised at the callus disregard for what mozilla is trying to accomplish. Its like 5 years ago why did they bother with this open standard, royalty free, patent unencumbered html stuff, they should have just shipped a free Microsoft doc "reader" by default, or why bother with javascript standard, when Microsoft had perfectly good active X systems to tie into native windows apis.

Mozilla knows what they doing, yes they may lose market share, but that is the nature of taking a principled decision that many people don't understand. The web will be better by getting people used to the idea that they need to support WebM in addition to H.264. As today smart phones become tomorrows calculators we won't have to pay taxes on the math that mediates contemporary conversations. Thous removing one small barrier to entry for anyone that wants to design or create audio visual communications systems.

I have not installed the WMP plugin.

[clone52431]

What really happened here: They built H.264 into the next version of the Windows Media Player plugin for Firefox.

Using Windows Media Player, back in the day, was just begging to get the virus that had cleverly disguised itself as hot_chick.mov. Using Windows Media Player is still just begging to get a virus. Granted now I have an antivirus that should catch those threats even if I’m a clueless idiot, being a clueless idiot just isn’t my thing.

I still won’t install the Windows Media Player plugin.

Re:callus disregard for what mozilla is trying to

[multipartmixed]

> why bother with javascript standard, when Microsoft had perfectly
> good active X systems to tie into native windows apis.

NPAPI and JavaScript beat ActiveX and VBScript to market.

No troll superhero should be w/out a song!

[Anonymous Coward]

I looked long and hard for the right amount of "cheesiness", and here is "CaPTaiN PaRaNoiD's" theme song (LMAO):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd85Qim_Z6A

Hahahaha!

No troll superhero should be without a song!

[Anonymous Coward]

I looked long and hard for the right amount of "cheesiness", and here is "CaPTaiN PaRaNoiD's" theme song (LMAO):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd85Qim_Z6A

Hahahahaha!

Summary could have skipped a sentance.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Microsoft has announced that it is releasing an H.264 plugin for Firefox. With that in mind, it sounds like it may not work on anything other than Windows 7"

Sounds about right to me

Let's see...

[Anonymous Coward]

If this doesn't become like the .NET framework plugin for Firefox...

The one that actually implemented all those nice IE vulnerabilities in Firefox. It was done through a windows update, and wasn't a true plugin, but rather an OS patch.

Re:callus disregard for what mozilla is trying to

[KingMotley]

Sorry, ActiveX (or the technology behind it... COM/OLE) was around long before netscape was even a company.

Granted, ActiveX got a name change in 1996 from COM/OLE 2.0, which was around the same time that NPAPI became available, but many had already been using it for years in VB, Word, etc. NPAPI didn't even support access from script (javascript/vbscript) until 1997.

Re:callus disregard for what mozilla is trying to

[multipartmixed]

Are you actually trying to tell me that you really believe that microsoft was shipping a browser that could embed ActiveX controls prior to netscape shipping a browser with NPAPI?

Because I'm pretty damn sure that's not the case. ISTR ActiveX not shipping 'till the 3.0 browsers, but NPAPI shipping with Netscape 2.

Re:callus disregard for what mozilla is trying to

[KingMotley]

No, I said ActiveX was around before NPAPI, not that Microsoft shipped a browser that supported it.

NPAPI and JavaScript beat ActiveX and VBScript to market.

That is not correct. NPAPI appeared in March 1996, however, ActiveX was around since 1990 as OLE Client 1.0. Then OLE Client 2.0 came about, then OLE Custom Controls in 1994. ActiveX was just a renaming of OLE Custom Controls with all interfaces being optional and the first IE browser to support it was 3.0. While IE 3.0 was offically released in August 1996, developers had the code for many months before then, and support was even added for NPAPI before it's offical release. IE 3.0 also added CSS, and Java Applet support, both of which arrived before the Netscape versions.

Now as for JavaScript...Of course Netscape had theirs first. It was a proprietary language written by Netscape (LiveScript). It was renamed to Javascript before the release and it was eventually submitted as ECMAScript. ECMAScript 1.0 was ratified in June 1997, by which time both browsers had support for it. IE 3.0, however, actually had support for allowing scripting languages (both JScript and VBScript) to interact with ActiveX/NPAPI controls since August 1996 while Netscape didn't add support until 1997 and even then only for NPAPI.

ffmpeg

[Anonymous Coward]

ffmpeg