10 ms·

Finally! I wonder why this took so long. The assumption that no sane site would want to stream in lossless when lossy codecs were starting to be really good (a

by niftich 10y ago

Finally! I wonder why this took so long. The assumption that no sane site would want to stream in lossless when lossy codecs were starting to be really good (and obviously much smaller)? Lack of expertise, manpower? Priorities? [1][2] Does every FF feature has to be 'parity-chrome'? It's even more interesting that Chrome also sat on this for ~5 years [3] and are just now about to release it also. Like the Firefox thread insinuates, will pundits credit TIDAL for lighting the fire under browser vendors to support lossless streaming? No such link appears to exist, aside from TIDAL already streaming to Chrome using NaCl [4], but when we look back in 10 years and see both of the major browser vendors adding FLAC support now as opposed to any other time in the previous 5 years, what will people think? [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=514365 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=514365 [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=586568 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=586568 [3] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=93887 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=93887 [4] https://support.tidal.com/hc/en-us/articles/202654692-HiFi-Option-is-Greyed-Out-Not-Selectable- https://support.tidal.com/hc/en-us/articles/202654692-HiFi-O...

Sylos 10y ago
Why this takes so long is because once such a standard is introduced, you can't take that decision back anymore without breaking a lot of things. They don't want to introduce standards which end up being used only by a small number of people while causing a lot of maintenance-work and then being tied to maintaining it anyways. That also is the reason why these decisions often happen in the same time frame for different browser vendors. If another browser vendors decides to introduce it, you can be much more sure that you won't be supporting it without anyone using it. And obviously also just to not be left behind by web developers.
- niftich 10y ago
  Maybe so. The counterpoint is that several of APIs added to the web platform in the last ~8 years have already been deprecated: stuff like WebSQL, File System, AppCache; there is no shortage of moving fast and breaking things when it comes to browser vendors. Something like a codec is comparatively trivial, because as a content server you can never rely on everyone supporting the same codec, so you have to stream among multiple formats anyway. When all of these JS APIs that FF or Chrome added were later deprecated and removed, everyone had to re-code their sites. So I'm hesitant to accept 'let's be really careful about this' as a rationale here.
  - mschuster91 10y ago
    > The counterpoint is that several of APIs added to the web platform in the last ~8 years have already been deprecated: stuff like WebSQL, File System, AppCache And two of these have been replaced by complex, over engineered stuff. WebSQL was replaced by IndexedDB which can't do a simple equivalent of SELECT ... ORDER BY ... GROUP BY... without ending in callback hell, and AppCache was replaced by ServiceWorkers.
- stesch 10y ago
  I've seen more animated PNG than FLAC files. Animated PNG got removed from Firefox.
  - swift 10y ago
    You're thinking of "MNG", which is a different PNG-related animation format than the simpler "animated PNG". MNG was removed, but animated PNG is still supported in Firefox and indeed is used in its UI.
    - stesch 10y ago
      I stand corrected.
  - mintplant 10y ago
    No it didn't.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
sjwright 10y ago
> I wonder why this took so long. Because supporting lossless audio streaming is as useful as supporting TIFF images or UTF-32 text encoding. Nice to add to the spec sheet; mostly useless in a practical setting. The only purpose that comes to mind for delivering lossless audio within a web page is to build, somewhat ironically, a lossy codec comparison tool which would in turn demonstrate why lossless audio isn't necessary.
- wiz21 10y ago
  so according to you leaving a castle fall into ruins is "good enough" because nobody wants to see it...
  - thaumasiotes 10y ago
    That would appear to be overwhelmingly the consensus of people with castles, too. Do they have some moral imperative to pay maintenance forever on something that has no use value and no hope of paying for itself?
- pimeys 10y ago
  I have pretty decent headphone system at work. I'm constantly using services like Tidal HiFi and listening to my own flac collection from Style Jukebox. I just want to have my music in the original quality and if needed, transcoding down to mp3. So there is at least one of us who has a serious need for flac in a browser. And the bandwidth it uses is still less than with a typical full-hd video stream.
  - sjwright 10y ago
    Why not stream in ~256kbps AAC or Opus? The audible quality drop is objectively proven to be zero. Make peace with the placebo effect and enjoy your life.
    - delta1 10y ago
      > objectively proven Links? "subjectively indistinguishable" would be a bit less argumentative
Manishearth 10y ago
> Does every FF feature has to be 'parity-chrome'? No, this is "parity-web". Web browsers usually simultaneously decide to implement or enable features. Firefox isn't copying Chrome; they're implementing the same feature at roughly the same time (presumably after discussing it first), so as not to cause further web compatibility rifts.

by niftich 10y ago

Sylos 10y ago

Why this takes so long is because once such a standard is introduced, you can't take that decision back anymore without breaking a lot of things. They don't want to introduce standards which end up being used only by a small number of people while causing a lot of maintenance-work and then being tied to maintaining it anyways. That also is the reason why these decisions often happen in the same time frame for different browser vendors. If another browser vendors decides to introduce it, you can be much more sure that you won't be supporting it without anyone using it. And obviously also just to not be left behind by web developers.

niftich 10y ago
Maybe so. The counterpoint is that several of APIs added to the web platform in the last ~8 years have already been deprecated: stuff like WebSQL, File System, AppCache; there is no shortage of moving fast and breaking things when it comes to browser vendors. Something like a codec is comparatively trivial, because as a content server you can never rely on everyone supporting the same codec, so you have to stream among multiple formats anyway. When all of these JS APIs that FF or Chrome added were later deprecated and removed, everyone had to re-code their sites. So I'm hesitant to accept 'let's be really careful about this' as a rationale here.
- mschuster91 10y ago
  > The counterpoint is that several of APIs added to the web platform in the last ~8 years have already been deprecated: stuff like WebSQL, File System, AppCache And two of these have been replaced by complex, over engineered stuff. WebSQL was replaced by IndexedDB which can't do a simple equivalent of SELECT ... ORDER BY ... GROUP BY... without ending in callback hell, and AppCache was replaced by ServiceWorkers.
stesch 10y ago
I've seen more animated PNG than FLAC files. Animated PNG got removed from Firefox.
- swift 10y ago
  You're thinking of "MNG", which is a different PNG-related animation format than the simpler "animated PNG". MNG was removed, but animated PNG is still supported in Firefox and indeed is used in its UI.
  - stesch 10y ago
    I stand corrected.
- mintplant 10y ago
  No it didn't.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

sjwright 10y ago

> I wonder why this took so long. Because supporting lossless audio streaming is as useful as supporting TIFF images or UTF-32 text encoding. Nice to add to the spec sheet; mostly useless in a practical setting. The only purpose that comes to mind for delivering lossless audio within a web page is to build, somewhat ironically, a lossy codec comparison tool which would in turn demonstrate why lossless audio isn't necessary.

wiz21 10y ago
so according to you leaving a castle fall into ruins is "good enough" because nobody wants to see it...
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
  That would appear to be overwhelmingly the consensus of people with castles, too. Do they have some moral imperative to pay maintenance forever on something that has no use value and no hope of paying for itself?
pimeys 10y ago
I have pretty decent headphone system at work. I'm constantly using services like Tidal HiFi and listening to my own flac collection from Style Jukebox. I just want to have my music in the original quality and if needed, transcoding down to mp3. So there is at least one of us who has a serious need for flac in a browser. And the bandwidth it uses is still less than with a typical full-hd video stream.
- sjwright 10y ago
  Why not stream in ~256kbps AAC or Opus? The audible quality drop is objectively proven to be zero. Make peace with the placebo effect and enjoy your life.
  - delta1 10y ago
    > objectively proven Links? "subjectively indistinguishable" would be a bit less argumentative

Manishearth 10y ago

> Does every FF feature has to be 'parity-chrome'? No, this is "parity-web". Web browsers usually simultaneously decide to implement or enable features. Firefox isn't copying Chrome; they're implementing the same feature at roughly the same time (presumably after discussing it first), so as not to cause further web compatibility rifts.