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Microsoft Edge, HTML5, and DRM
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft is building its new browser, Edge, with the intention of avoiding many of the flaws that plagued Internet Explorer over its long and tumultuous life. Part of this involves moving away from plug-ins, and Edge will not support ActiveX. Instead, they're focusing on interoperable media, and that means non-plug-in video players that meet HTML5 specs. Of course, not all video players want to disseminate their content for free, which means: DRM. Microsoft's Edge team has published a new post explaining how they'll be handling support for DRM and "premium media" in the new browser.
They say, "Windows 10 and Microsoft Edge support DASH, MSE, EME and CENC natively, and other major browsers ship implementations of MSE and CENC compliant EME. This support allows developers to build plug-in free web video apps that runs across a huge range of platforms and devices, with each MSE/EME implementation built on top of a different media pipeline and DRM provider. In the days when DRM systems used proprietary file formats and encryption methods, this variation in DRM providers by browser would have presented a significant issue. With the development and use of Common Encryption (CENC), the problem is substantially reduced because the files are compressed in standard formats and encrypted using global industry standards. The service provider issues the keys and licenses necessary to consume the content in a given browser, but the website code, content and encryption keys are common across all of them, regardless of which DRM is in use."
They say, "Windows 10 and Microsoft Edge support DASH, MSE, EME and CENC natively, and other major browsers ship implementations of MSE and CENC compliant EME. This support allows developers to build plug-in free web video apps that runs across a huge range of platforms and devices, with each MSE/EME implementation built on top of a different media pipeline and DRM provider. In the days when DRM systems used proprietary file formats and encryption methods, this variation in DRM providers by browser would have presented a significant issue. With the development and use of Common Encryption (CENC), the problem is substantially reduced because the files are compressed in standard formats and encrypted using global industry standards. The service provider issues the keys and licenses necessary to consume the content in a given browser, but the website code, content and encryption keys are common across all of them, regardless of which DRM is in use."
No more from them in regards to the 'net, it's over.
As a professional web developer utilizing microsoft technology has proven time and time again that proprietary created code is inferior, slower, and less operational than the open source movement which is producing operation at an astounding rate for even minimal hardware. .net is inferior to javascript, iis is inferior to both apache and nodejs, they never came up with a good solid fast user interface, or a decent database. Everything they create they try to glue a price tag to in some way, and none of it can talk to anything else unless you pay more money to learn to use a system that is supposed to facilitate getting work done.
Their past provides a pattern that all intelligences can see plainly, they are hostile to the idea of openness, creation, and innovation except where it feeds them.
All microsoft products are radioactive with their greedy selfish nature.
Posting AC as I'm not sure this is public, but MS has told their corporate partners that the plugin APIs will not be ready when Windows 10 releases, and they have given no date other than 'after release.'
Here is the big question: How do the plugins (Flash, Shockwave, Java, Acrobat, DRM video players) run? Are they running in the same context as the browser (like current IE), run in a separate process (like Firefox), or run in a more isolated VM where each tab and window is in its memory space (Chrome)?
The Web browser is the first source of attack, and one of the primary means for malware to get on a system. Even with the low security context that IE had starting in Vista, that wasn't sufficient for isolation. It almost takes running the browser in a sandbox (sandboxie) or a complete VM (with its own filesystem) to protect a machine against browser weaknesses, just because a browser is always in constant contact with untrusted code.
I hope MS designs Edge with a lot more isolation (so a compromised add-on in one window can't attack another window or tab), because when designing a new browser is the only real time that they can do it right with security, as opposed to reactively fight fires, as with IE.
Google's stewardship of web video has been the primary reason for these delays and frustrations. Not only have they been dicking around with HTML5 video, changing how it works every 6 months and screwing with YouTube in ways that make other browsers often look bad "just 'cause", they also paid Adobe to make a Chromium-specific version of Flash on their new plugin API, despite knowing full well that plugins were on the way out, and nobody in their right mind would adopt their plugin interface. So now most browsers have either a shit Flash version that Adobe doesn't care about anymore, or flaky HTML5 video support that requires implementing several immense new APIs like MSE, EME, and others. Google basically has a serious "not invented here" problem with web technology that leaves everyone that doesn't have a huge Google banner over their heads cold, and for every person believing they're making the web better, the actual developers in the trenches are increasingly frustrated with their efforts to rush features out in Chrome that no one else could sanely adopt for months or years - and trust me, others like the Webkit and Firefox team have been working closely to try to make heads or tails out of their specs and adopt them all along.
.net is inferior to javascript
In what way?
One advantage of the .NET Framework is static typing. In a fully dynamic language such as PHP, Python, or JavaScript, you need to put unit tests into your program to make sure the correct types are getting passed in and out of functions. A language with static typing, such as C#, already ensures type safety. So it's like the compiler writes a lot of your unit tests for you.
The .NET Framework used to have the disadvantage of being a non-free platform, which put .NET programs in what FSF calls a "Java trap". But nowadays, a lot of the interesting parts of the .NET Framework are released under a free software license.
Who comes up with these idiotic names?
I don't know who, but I do know when. IE 8 introduced the X-ua-compatible header. "Use the following value to display the webpage in edge mode, which is the highest standards mode supported by Internet Explorer."
Not a real big fan of html5test.com. The weight they assign things are very chrome favored. Just as an example, they list stupid things like :read-only, :read-write twice, and 2d blend modes (7 points) which favor Chrome, but useful things like video track and audio track selection are weighted very little (4 points).
As distasteful as I find DRM, at least we see Microsoft trying to improve their web browser. With Edge they're actually succeeding in creating something that average users do want to use!
Not exactly. Microsoft's Edge browser is still in fourth place in terms of being standards compliant,
Err.... standards? Look, HTML5Test leans heavily on W3C working drafts which are nowhere near finished. Edge doesn't implement Web Components, streams, service workers, web notifications, speech recognition and speech synthesis. These account for about 10% of the total HTML5Test score, but they're all drafts or proposals!
The fact that some browsers are implementing these drafts without a prefix is a PROBLEM, not a good thing. Library & web site developers end up taking dependencies on things that may very well change over time.
Meanwhile, if you want to stick to stable, published specifications, Edge is currently the leading browser for ES6 support in terms of percentage of features implemented. As for CSS, have a look at the list of CSS features Edge doesn't support and note that for most of them, at least one of Firefox and Chrome hasn't implemented them either..... and/or they're a working draft.... or other browsers have just implemented them in the last few months.