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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."
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!
This should scare the living daylights out of Mozilla. They've been having enough trouble competing with Chrome. Now they'll be competing with Chrome, as well as this browser from Microsoft that people are pretty happy about so far.
Things don't look good for Firefox. Firefox's share of the market has dropped so much. Recent browser market share stats show that all versions of Firefox Desktop are only around 8% of the market. Firefox 38 is only at 7.45%, so we can expect Firefox 39 to be below that, possibly forever. Firefox for Android is at 0.14% (yes, that's a leading 0!), and Firefox isn't really a viable option on iOS.
To put things in perspective, the latest version of Chrome for Android by itself, at 13.77%, has almost twice the number of users as Firefox has in total! IE 11 at 7.60%, and Safari for iOS 8.3 at 6.42%, both almost exceed Firefox's total number of users!
Clearly desktop users are fleeing Firefox, and nobody wants to use Firefox for Android. Mozilla has no other projects of significance aside from Firefox. Nobody uses Firefox OS, even the third-worlders they tried to force it on. Bugzilla is a relic. They put Thunderbird out to pasture some time ago. Let's Encrypt has yet to deliver anything useful. Rust is unimpressive and unwieldy, even now that 1.0 was finally released after so many years. Servo is very experimental, and its progress is crawling along slower than even Rust's did!
This decline in the usage of Firefox, combined with the total lack of future prospects, should have everyone involved with Mozilla in a total panic! This is an organization that should be shitting its pants, so to speak. The only reason it still exists, Firefox, is rapidly evaporating. What, do they really think that Yahoo! will keep throwing money at them once Firefox has almost no users to target?
Yet instead of the unrestrained panic that we should be seeing out of Mozilla, we instead see them continuing down the same path of failure that has dogged them for so many years now. They make more dumb and unwanted social media changes to Firefox that nobody actually wants. Heck, they most notable part of this release is that they removed or disabled existing functionality!
I used to like Firefox. I want Mozilla to succeed. But son of a bitch, it's like they're doing everything they can to speed up their demise, while being totally oblivious to it the whole time! Why won't they, as a collective group of people, wake up to what's happening?!