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I actually did start working on this about a year ago — and realized that I didn't actually have to write any code! A Mozilla developer had already written a g

by blasdel 16y ago

I actually did start working on this about a year ago — and realized that I didn't actually have to write any code! A Mozilla developer had already written a gstreamer backend for use in Fennec, because the original implementation couldn't play Theora in real time on any of the Maemo devices. Of course, there was a Mozilla lead in the main bugzilla thread shooting down any suggestions that it be used in Firefox. So it comes down purely to the maintenance burden — but the codebase was organized so that I'd need hostile forks of Gecko, XULRunner, and Firefox. No thanks. Shortly afterward Chrome was usable on Linux, and I no longer had an itch to scratch.

doublec 16y ago
I was the original author of the GStreamer patch. It wasn't developed for Fennec - it was originally developed as a backend for the Firefox desktop browser. I wrote about it here when I first developed it: http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2008/04/firefox-html5-video-with-gstreamer.html http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2008/04/firefox-html5-video-wit... Once it was decided to not use GStreamer for the desktop we continued with the work on the Ogg backend and the patch bitrotted. It was subsequently picked up by another Mozilla developer for Fennec work. The patch is currently waiting on review (by me) and as I understand it it will be landed but disabled at compile time for third parties to enable if they want it. I'm not involved in that decision or whether it would be in desktop Firefox however. An H.264 specific backend wouldn't be too hard to do. It should only be a few days work to get a ffmpeg backend going for H.264 support. I had a partial one implemented that I used for testing although it has bitrot quite a bit now. Your point about having to maintain a fork still stands however as there's no pluggable API for backends.

by blasdel 16y ago

doublec 16y ago

I was the original author of the GStreamer patch. It wasn't developed for Fennec - it was originally developed as a backend for the Firefox desktop browser. I wrote about it here when I first developed it: http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2008/04/firefox-html5-video-with-gstreamer.html http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2008/04/firefox-html5-video-wit... Once it was decided to not use GStreamer for the desktop we continued with the work on the Ogg backend and the patch bitrotted. It was subsequently picked up by another Mozilla developer for Fennec work. The patch is currently waiting on review (by me) and as I understand it it will be landed but disabled at compile time for third parties to enable if they want it. I'm not involved in that decision or whether it would be in desktop Firefox however. An H.264 specific backend wouldn't be too hard to do. It should only be a few days work to get a ffmpeg backend going for H.264 support. I had a partial one implemented that I used for testing although it has bitrot quite a bit now. Your point about having to maintain a fork still stands however as there's no pluggable API for backends.