Many of the rendering engine parameters can be set in Firefox's preferences. Firefox prefs are stored as a js file. Swiftfox makes a different set of trade-offs in these parameters than the Mozilla engineers. You're free to take your pick, but I'm goin' with the Mozilla engineers.
That and Ubuntu does its own recompile...they make changes. It's not Mozilla's build.
I doubt that Ubuntu has an official 3.5 RC package built, as of yet. The benchmark article, even suggests, they are still shipping Firefox 3.0.11 with Ubuntu 9.04. No matter how bleeding edge Ubuntu may seem, it is very unlikely that Canonical would ship a Beta version or Release Candidate of Firefox.
The Ubuntu guys that maintain Ubuntu's build of Firefox are pretty quick to get new versions compiled. That doesn't mean it shows up in the primary Ubuntu repo, but I'd bet that they've built it already.
Mozilla's expertise is in Web browsers and the Internet, not in code compilers. Your suggestion makes about as much sense as telling Mozilla it should be funding development of faster hard drives or better LCDs. They'd all improve the Firefox experience, but don't really make a lot of sense for a browser vendor to be doing.
As for GCC being inferior to other compilers, I'd recommend you ask that team directly. I'm sure they'll give you an honest answer.
Mozilla doesn't compile the Linux builds in widespread use.
If you're wondering why Firefox wasn't compiled with profile guided optimizations, ask your Linux distros. They're ultimately responsible for it since they cut Mozilla out of the process years ago. Your vendor relationship for Firefox is with Ubuntu or Red Hat, not with Mozilla. That's what the Linux distros demand and so that's the way it's probably going to stay.
Got links? I'd love to see some support for this. Until I get those, I'm going to take the large number of anecdotal accounts from the people who actually compile popular apps like Firefox on Windows and Linux as having a bit more weight than your lone voice without any supporting evidence or even specif anecdotes.
"But on Linux, it is inherently ugly. The beast looks ancient and the fonts and dialogs make matters worse."
What do you mean "on Linux"? On Ubuntu? on Fedora? Some other distro? The OS is responsible for the fonts, not Firefox and the distros almost all make changes to the default look and feel of Firefox.
A very large chunk of Firefox's developers have Linux as their primary platform. Linux Firefox absolutely doesn't get crap treatment from Firefox developers. You're obviously not familiar with the comparative qualities of the compilers on different platforms or you would asking "why do the Linux compilers get beat so badly by the Windows compilers."
In addition to a compiling process called profile guided optimization, or PGO, it's also a safe bet that the Windows compiler just spits out better (faster and smaller) results than the Linux compiler.
Putting the blame all on Firefox when there's no doubt a certain amount of performance penalty that comes with a Linux's less good compiler is just lame.
How about telling the linux tool makers to build tools that output faster and smaller code instead of demanding that app developers solve those problems?
Finally, what "linux" build was this? Did it use profile guided optimization and other performance features of Mozilla's official Windows build system? If not, you're comparing apples to oranges.
That is ignoring the basic problem though. There are many video formats. Does it make any sense that the browser only supports a single one as firefox 3.5 is doing?
Firefox currently only supports one video decoder, Theora, and one audio decoder, Vorbis, but there's no reason it won't include additional decoders. Dirac is being talked about and there are others.
Think about images on the Web. There are jpegs, gifs, and pngs. Gifs are going away and we're basically seeing jpegs and pngs. There are many image formats. Does it make sense that browsers are only focusing on 3?
They have to be provided for each platform, or they won't come into wide use.
Windows Media Player?
Silverlight?
QuickTime?
If by "each platform" you mean, and the previous poster's "cross-platform" comment means what most people mean when they say cross-platform at slashdot -- Mac, Windows and Linux, then I think you're wrong.
The Flash Player plug-in contains a number of video decoders. In addition to the most recently added h.264, it's got Sorenson Spark (H.263) and On2's VP6.
I think that Flash Player 6 was the first to support video and that was Sorenson Spark. Then in Player 8, I think it was, they added VP6. In player 9 they introduced h.264. They haven't removed support for the older codecs to provide backwards compatibility.
Why is anyone worried about the quality of videos your going to watch in your browser? The vast majority of those videos are not going to be interesting enough to want to see them in full HD glory.
That's a bullshit assumption. I watch streaming video on my TV from sites like Hulu and YouTube, and the higher quality video, the better.
Yes. You are part of a small but growing minority but even so I expect that Theora+Vorbis high-def content at comparable to H264+AAC bitrates would be satisfactory. Check for yourself here if you've got a Firefox 3.5 pre-release.
For the overwhelming majority of Web video, and for the overwhelming majority of Web users, though, Theora+Vorbis won't just be satisfactory, but will be virtually indistinguishable from what users are already quite comfortable with.
tepples, you claimed that H.264 requires twice the bitrate to achieve the same quality. d235j responded that it only took15% more bandwidth to achieve the same quality and you failed to respond to that.
Also, for the last several years h.263 was "good enough" for billions of video views from hundreds of millions of users. Theora is considerably better than h.263 and very close to h.264. Your claim that it requires twice the bandwidth to math h.264 just doesn't hold water with the overwhelming majority of video content online today. For real-world online video content, both standard and high-def, Theora holds its own against H264. It might not be better, but at comparable bitrates, I'd wager you couldn't find more than 2% of the Web population who can appreciate the differences. Oh, and Theora is getting better with every passing day AND in my experience it beats H264 in decoding CPU usage.
A lot of video producers like to rely on the fact that Flash makes it difficult to download videos to your hard drive.
They aren't relying on this and if they are, they're just plain silly. You can either grab a Firefox extension to download Flash files or you can just do a Tools->Page Info and Save from the Media tab.
Unfortunately, Theora still needs twice the bitrate as H.264 to deliver the same quality, even with the "Thusnelda" rewrite of the encoder.
That's not my experience. See here and here for some real-world comparisons. H264 can be better than Theora -- though not majorly so, but in the real world at sites like YouTube, H264 doesn't stand out from Theora for most cases.
The last time Mozilla added support for a tag that had some automatic animated behavior, the browser was still called Netscape and the tag was universally reviled.
Um. Wrong. That wasn't Mozilla (the organization) that added that. That was Netscape (both the organization and the product).
So are we going to require browsers to install with codec packs?
No. Ideally the major browser vendors will all ship baseline codecs -- hopefully Theora+Vorbis in Ogg. Some vendors will (also) ship H.264+AAC in mp4.
I'm tempted to let it alone.
I'm sure you're not alone. If you're a content producer or a content distributor, I hope you'll change your mind when you see video as a first-class citizen on the Web rather than an afterthought trapped inside of plug-ins.
What you're saying is HTML is going to add the ability to do what people have been doing for 5 yrs with Flash.
No, what we're saying is that video is going to become a first-class Web citizen that can interact with the rest of Web content in ways that Web developers want. Flash's video is locked inside the plug-in prison and cannot be well integrated with non-flash (real Web) content. Bringing video (and audio) to HTML means that real Web content like other HTML, JavaScript, SVG, CSS, etc. can interact with video and improve on what people have been doing for 5 years with Flash.
The whole point of the video tag is that it is an HTML tag and not a plug-in solution. The plug-in solutions already exist today and web developers and browser vendors think that's sub-optimal.
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Many of the rendering engine parameters can be set in Firefox's preferences. Firefox prefs are stored as a js file. Swiftfox makes a different set of trade-offs in these parameters than the Mozilla engineers. You're free to take your pick, but I'm goin' with the Mozilla engineers.
I doubt that Ubuntu has an official 3.5 RC package built, as of yet. The benchmark article, even suggests, they are still shipping Firefox 3.0.11 with Ubuntu 9.04. No matter how bleeding edge Ubuntu may seem, it is very unlikely that Canonical would ship a Beta version or Release Candidate of Firefox.
The Ubuntu guys that maintain Ubuntu's build of Firefox are pretty quick to get new versions compiled. That doesn't mean it shows up in the primary Ubuntu repo, but I'd bet that they've built it already.
Mozilla's expertise is in Web browsers and the Internet, not in code compilers. Your suggestion makes about as much sense as telling Mozilla it should be funding development of faster hard drives or better LCDs. They'd all improve the Firefox experience, but don't really make a lot of sense for a browser vendor to be doing. As for GCC being inferior to other compilers, I'd recommend you ask that team directly. I'm sure they'll give you an honest answer.
Mozilla doesn't compile the Linux builds in widespread use. If you're wondering why Firefox wasn't compiled with profile guided optimizations, ask your Linux distros. They're ultimately responsible for it since they cut Mozilla out of the process years ago. Your vendor relationship for Firefox is with Ubuntu or Red Hat, not with Mozilla. That's what the Linux distros demand and so that's the way it's probably going to stay.
Got links? I'd love to see some support for this. Until I get those, I'm going to take the large number of anecdotal accounts from the people who actually compile popular apps like Firefox on Windows and Linux as having a bit more weight than your lone voice without any supporting evidence or even specif anecdotes.
"But on Linux, it is inherently ugly. The beast looks ancient and the fonts and dialogs make matters worse." What do you mean "on Linux"? On Ubuntu? on Fedora? Some other distro? The OS is responsible for the fonts, not Firefox and the distros almost all make changes to the default look and feel of Firefox.
A very large chunk of Firefox's developers have Linux as their primary platform. Linux Firefox absolutely doesn't get crap treatment from Firefox developers. You're obviously not familiar with the comparative qualities of the compilers on different platforms or you would asking "why do the Linux compilers get beat so badly by the Windows compilers."
In addition to a compiling process called profile guided optimization, or PGO, it's also a safe bet that the Windows compiler just spits out better (faster and smaller) results than the Linux compiler.
Actually, it probably does say something about the superiority of the Windows compiler and potentially other Windows tools.
Putting the blame all on Firefox when there's no doubt a certain amount of performance penalty that comes with a Linux's less good compiler is just lame. How about telling the linux tool makers to build tools that output faster and smaller code instead of demanding that app developers solve those problems? Finally, what "linux" build was this? Did it use profile guided optimization and other performance features of Mozilla's official Windows build system? If not, you're comparing apples to oranges.
That is ignoring the basic problem though. There are many video formats. Does it make any sense that the browser only supports a single one as firefox 3.5 is doing?
Firefox currently only supports one video decoder, Theora, and one audio decoder, Vorbis, but there's no reason it won't include additional decoders. Dirac is being talked about and there are others. Think about images on the Web. There are jpegs, gifs, and pngs. Gifs are going away and we're basically seeing jpegs and pngs. There are many image formats. Does it make sense that browsers are only focusing on 3?
So plugins are always cross-platform now?!
They have to be provided for each platform, or they won't come into wide use.
Windows Media Player? Silverlight? QuickTime? If by "each platform" you mean, and the previous poster's "cross-platform" comment means what most people mean when they say cross-platform at slashdot -- Mac, Windows and Linux, then I think you're wrong.
The Flash Player plug-in contains a number of video decoders. In addition to the most recently added h.264, it's got Sorenson Spark (H.263) and On2's VP6. I think that Flash Player 6 was the first to support video and that was Sorenson Spark. Then in Player 8, I think it was, they added VP6. In player 9 they introduced h.264. They haven't removed support for the older codecs to provide backwards compatibility.
Does Theora even have hardware acceleration for the big three (AMD Intel Nvidia) GPUs yet?
Not yet, but there's no reason that they couldn't or wouldn't if there was good reason (like an increase in the use of Theora on the Web.)
That's a bullshit assumption. I watch streaming video on my TV from sites like Hulu and YouTube, and the higher quality video, the better.
Yes. You are part of a small but growing minority but even so I expect that Theora+Vorbis high-def content at comparable to H264+AAC bitrates would be satisfactory. Check for yourself here if you've got a Firefox 3.5 pre-release.
For the overwhelming majority of Web video, and for the overwhelming majority of Web users, though, Theora+Vorbis won't just be satisfactory, but will be virtually indistinguishable from what users are already quite comfortable with.
tepples, you claimed that H.264 requires twice the bitrate to achieve the same quality. d235j responded that it only took15% more bandwidth to achieve the same quality and you failed to respond to that. Also, for the last several years h.263 was "good enough" for billions of video views from hundreds of millions of users. Theora is considerably better than h.263 and very close to h.264. Your claim that it requires twice the bandwidth to math h.264 just doesn't hold water with the overwhelming majority of video content online today. For real-world online video content, both standard and high-def, Theora holds its own against H264. It might not be better, but at comparable bitrates, I'd wager you couldn't find more than 2% of the Web population who can appreciate the differences. Oh, and Theora is getting better with every passing day AND in my experience it beats H264 in decoding CPU usage.
Not all the time. Try that with Hulu or Megavideo.
There are other add-ons and apps that make downloading Hulu content easy. Try Download Helper for Firefox or some of the for-pay apps.
A lot of video producers like to rely on the fact that Flash makes it difficult to download videos to your hard drive.
They aren't relying on this and if they are, they're just plain silly. You can either grab a Firefox extension to download Flash files or you can just do a Tools->Page Info and Save from the Media tab.
Flash Video is unbelievably processor intensive (especially given it's pretty crappy quality), surely you've noticed that?
Yes. Flash, and its implementation of H264 can be very processor intensive. Theora can actually beat H264 in CPU usage under many circumstances.
Unfortunately, Theora still needs twice the bitrate as H.264 to deliver the same quality, even with the "Thusnelda" rewrite of the encoder.
That's not my experience. See here and here for some real-world comparisons. H264 can be better than Theora -- though not majorly so, but in the real world at sites like YouTube, H264 doesn't stand out from Theora for most cases.
If we can get Google to go along with Theora, we'd be all set.
Google is going along with Theora. Chrome will (does in test builds) support Theora+Vorbis in Ogg.
You can read the specification here. The spec provides for and browser vendors are implement the autoplay attribute.
The last time Mozilla added support for a tag that had some automatic animated behavior, the browser was still called Netscape and the tag was universally reviled.
Um. Wrong. That wasn't Mozilla (the organization) that added that. That was Netscape (both the organization and the product).
So are we going to require browsers to install with codec packs?
No. Ideally the major browser vendors will all ship baseline codecs -- hopefully Theora+Vorbis in Ogg. Some vendors will (also) ship H.264+AAC in mp4.
I'm tempted to let it alone.
I'm sure you're not alone. If you're a content producer or a content distributor, I hope you'll change your mind when you see video as a first-class citizen on the Web rather than an afterthought trapped inside of plug-ins.
What you're saying is HTML is going to add the ability to do what people have been doing for 5 yrs with Flash.
No, what we're saying is that video is going to become a first-class Web citizen that can interact with the rest of Web content in ways that Web developers want. Flash's video is locked inside the plug-in prison and cannot be well integrated with non-flash (real Web) content. Bringing video (and audio) to HTML means that real Web content like other HTML, JavaScript, SVG, CSS, etc. can interact with video and improve on what people have been doing for 5 years with Flash.
The video tag should be run by plugins,
The whole point of the video tag is that it is an HTML tag and not a plug-in solution. The plug-in solutions already exist today and web developers and browser vendors think that's sub-optimal.