Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.'
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.