7 ms·

H.264 Support Lands in Firefox 20 Nightly on Windows

82 points by twapi 14y ago

buster 14y ago
Is this good or bad? Does Firefox support H.264 on other OS like Mac or Linux without flash, too?
- azakai 14y ago
  There are bugs open on doing that and progress on them. I think the windows one was first to land on nightly.
- cube13 14y ago
  Firefox only supports H.264 on Win7 and above because MS provided a plugin for the MS-provided codec. I don't believe that OSX or Linux provide it, which is why Firefox does not support it natively. Hopefully this means that they've finally worked out an agreement for licensing, and can support it.
  - protomyth 14y ago
    OS X has H.264 available to all developers without additional licensing fees. Why would Firefox need to have a separate licensing agreement?
  - 0x006A 14y ago
    You know, instead of writing things without checking you could have looked this up: i.e. via the tracking bug in bugzilla: Support H.264/AAC/MP3 video/audio playback on desktop Firefox (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=799318 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=799318) On Linux Firefox will use GStreamer, the same backend also used in Firefox OS, its not enabled in the nightly builds since not all distros have the right version of GStreamer and it ca not be loaded dynamically right now (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=794282 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=794282) For OS X the plan seams to be to use AV Foundations but no patch has been submitted so far. (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=801521 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=801521)
    - cube13 14y ago
      None of those bugs are resolved, so where was I wrong? In fact, there's this bug for H.264 support: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=541286 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=541286 It was raised in January, and it's status is: "RESOLVED WONTFIX" The stable Firefox build, as of today(12/19/2012) does not support those codecs.
      - doublec 14y ago
        We are implementing support on desktop using OS frameworks where we can. So far we have: - support for Linux via GStreamer landed but not built by default. It needs a bit more work. - support for Windows 7 and above which the OP post is about - Mac OS X is not yet underway but is planned. - Hardware H.264 decoding on Android phones via libstagefright. Some phones supported and enabled by default. Some supported but disabled at the moment. Some unsupported. - Hardware H.264 decoding on Firefox OS/B2G enabled by default, implemented via libstagefright. Phone vendors provide the binary blobs to do the decoding.
        0x006A 14y ago
        will you enable H.264 support only on desktops once you have working backends for Windows/Linux/OS X or will they be enabled by default as they are working? Just wondering if there will be stable releases of Firefox where some platforms have H.264 decodes and some don't.
        doublec 14y ago
        They will be enabled by default as they are working. We already have the issue of some platforms having it and others not. Some Android devices have it with Firefox for Android and some don't for example. Linux distro's could enable the GStreamer backend and gain it while others don't as another. For detection sites should use the API "canPlayType" and similar functionality to detect if the browser supports playback.
    - doublec 14y ago
  - duaneb 14y ago
    It was a pretty big deal a while ago that quicktime support H.264; off hand, I'm pretty sure they supported it for years before MS did. If firefox supports quicktime, they support H.264. EDIT: Well, I'll eat my hat. I'm not sure why Firefox needs a different licensing agreement on OSX when they COULD just hook into quicktime without any licensing fees at all. I'm probably grossly misunderstanding the situation. EDIT2: Ok, so I guess AVFoundation is just the objective-c frontend for OSX's media libs. I can't for the life of me understand why it took them so long to implement.
    - tedmielczarek 14y ago
      a) We decided not to support h.264 for non-technical reasons (patent-encumbrance etc) for quite some time. b) We don't have infinite developer resources, so it just hasn't gotten done since then.
- doublec 14y ago
  Firefox on Linux has GStreamer but it's turned off at build time. Developers can build with it to test it. At some point it'll be enabled by default, or distros can enable it for their builds, to get H.264 support.
jakerocheleau 14y ago
Yeah I'm struggling to determine if this really is a big step. I'm not sure what the difference is between "Firefox Nightly" and regular old Firefox. But honestly, most browsers support H.264/MPEG-4 AVC at this point(especially mobile). I would really like to see this become the primary codec for streaming web video. It has excellent compression ratios, much better than webm or flv and it's the perfect encoding type for HD videos.
- ck2 14y ago
  It's a huge step for encoding videos in just one format for all browsers. Even on youtube, 50% of the videos I try to see cannot be watched without flash.
  - PleaseStand 14y ago
    "Videos with ads are not supported (they will play in the Flash player)". http://www.youtube.com/html5 http://www.youtube.com/html5
  - ciupicri 14y ago
    For all browsers running on the same operating system i.e. Windows.
  - Yaggo 14y ago
    You can watch those without Flash by faking your UA string (try e.g. iPad). Feature detection, Google?
- montecarl 14y ago
  I believe that "Nightly" refers to the nightly build. That is it is a build of Firefox that follows the current development branch.
- azakai 14y ago
  Nightly is the build generated each night from the latest trunk code. After 6 weeks, nightly becomes aurora, which is more stable (not updated each night). Then after 6 weeks, it becomes beta and is tested by a wide audience. After 6 more weeks, it is released as the current stable version.
ck2 14y ago
Firefox 20 moves to aurora channel on January 6th so it will get a little more exposure then. This means that finally you can encode all your videos into just one format for all browsers, desktop and mobile. Well, one format but probably two bitrates.
HelloMcFly 14y ago
Does that mean soon I'll be able to control playback speed on Coursera and Khan Academy (presuming I've signed up for HTML5 beta in YouTube, which I have)? Anyone know?
- dmnd 14y ago
  If this new H.264 support in Firefox means that you can control playback speed on YouTube itself, you should also be able to control the speed on Khan Academy (or any other site that uses YouTube's iframe embed).
  - doublec 14y ago
    Support for HTML's playbackRate API was landed a few weeks back. See bug 495040 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=495040 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=495040 This means that sites that control playback speed using the HTML media API should work.
mtgx 14y ago
I wonder why they gave up on this issue. I think it's because of Firefox OS. But all new chips support hardware acceleration for VP8, so I don't get it. Also, VP9, which is the codec Google started working on since they bought On2, is starting to be implemented in Chromium, along with Opus inside WebM. In the end I don't blame them too much, though. They seemed to have tried to take an even bigger stance pro-VP8, than Google itself, at least publicly. Google could've made the WebM player the default one for Youtube a long time ago, and only leave the Flash one as fallback, much like Apple took the stance with h.264 and gave up on Flash years ago, and then jumpstart the momentum for VP8. But they never did that. Mozilla alone certainly didn't have the power to turn the whole web towards VP8. I think Google could've done it with Youtube, especially considering all their videos are already encoded in VP8. VP8 is also the chosen codec for WebRTC.
- kibwen 14y ago
  If you're curious why, see this mailing list thread for the discussion: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.platform/-xTei5rYThU/DkM9AIbkNNIJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.platform/-xTei5r... Here's the money quote from none other than Andreas Gal: "I do believe this war is lost. Just look around. Almost none of the content users want to watch is available in WebM. The only reason desktop is usable is because of Flash, a proprietary plugin, playing video for us (in H.264, mostly). Even Google, supposedly a proponent of open codecs, never fully converted youtube and never dropped H.264 from Chrome. Taking a principled (I would at this point prefer 'stubborn' I think) stance on H.264 won't change reality. It just hurts us and our users. Firefox got to the point where we are on desktop today by embracing reality. In the early days we started supporting IE-isms like document.all that were god awfully ugly and non-standard. But it was needed for compatibility so we can give people a usable web experience. The web uses H.264. Thats an unpleasant fact, but its a fact. We have to support it whether we like it or not, so we can be around for the next round and continue to influence the web for the better." So to say that they "gave up" isn't the whole story. Mozilla recognized that this wasn't a hill worth dying upon, and are willing to make sacrifices in order to remain relevant in the pursuit of keeping the web open.
- Someone 14y ago
  But what will they do for Firefox OS? Leave it out? Get OEMs on board, and have them pay the license fee? Add an 'in app purchase' where users can buy H.264 decoding?
twoodfin 14y ago
On a related note, has Google officially dropped their plans to remove H.264 from Chrome? They made a big deal about it a couple of years ago, but it's still there, no?
- zobzu 14y ago
  seems it was more about marketing than anything :( they probably dropped the ball midway for reasons similar to firefox
  - polshaw 14y ago
    >[google] probably dropped the ball midway for reasons similar to firefox Sorry, i really can't accept this. Google absolutely had it in their power to move us away from h264. If youtube, chrome, android and firefox were all webM centric, it would become the main codec used on the web for video (to be honest, youtube alone would be capable of doing this). Users (that would be >60% of the web) would blame the content provider if videos did not work, forcing them to adopt webM, in a post-flash world. Compare this to mozilla, with no online video presence, and standing alone, where users would blame firefox and move to chrome. I don't really understand google's motivation, but perhaps they were (irrationally?) fearful of losing users to IE/safari.. or the influence of iOS?
    - ZeroGravitas 14y ago
      It was a good effort from Google but just too late to win that particular battle. They needed H.264 for mobile, just like Firefox OS because Apple had already made that the de-facto standard. They obviously came to the same conclusion as Mozilla, but being corporation rather than a charity they had less reason to be forthcoming about the fact that they'd failed to achieve their aim. But Google and Mozilla are both key to the future of royalty-free codecs with Opus, VP9, WebRTC etc. particularly via the coming global dominance of Android so I don't really see where the benefit of pointing fingers and finding traitors is, there's plenty of villains on the opposing side if you want someone to be angry at.
cpearce 14y ago
Note H.264 support in Firefox is only available on Windows 7, and soon Vista. So if you want to support Windows XP, you will still need WebM, Ogg, or Flash fallback.
- prodigal_erik 14y ago
  For WinXP do you need to transcode, or can you just serve a lightweight player UI that use H.264 support built into the Flash plugin?
  - cpearce 14y ago
    It depends. You'll get better integration into the browser if you transcode. But if you're doing the "YouTube testcase", just using a Flash player fallback (without transcoding) would probably suit your needs adequately.
  - acdha 14y ago
    Use something like mediaelement.js which uses standard formats first and falls back to Flash if not - XP is a legacy platform so there's no point in investing time on it.
pepijndevos 14y ago
Will Mac also get this? I'm not sure, but I think this CoreAudio, CoreVideo and friends might have this stuff.
- dbcooper 14y ago
  They plan to implement OSX support soon. Here's the bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=801521 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=801521
notatoad 14y ago
more accurately, OS media decoders are now supported on firefox. Firefox isn't actually providing support for h.264, they're just exposing your operating system's video decoders. so if your OS doesn't have h.264 support, you're not going to have it in firefox.
- thristian 14y ago
  As far as I know, the only reasonably common desktop OS to lack H.264 support out of the box is Windows XP, and Mozilla plans to use Flash to decode H.264 video there. Well, I guess Linux also doesn't support H.264 unless you're in a jurisdiction that doesn't allow software patents, or you're willing to be a scofflaw, but there's not much Mozilla can do about that. :(
  - icebraining 14y ago
    You can actually get a licensed codec for Linux, if you're willing to pay for it, like the Fluendo[1]. Personally, I just use x264. Fuck MPEG-LA. [1]: http://www.fluendo.com/shop/product/complete-set-of-playback-plugins/ http://www.fluendo.com/shop/product/complete-set-of-playback...
devcpp 14y ago
Wow, they're at 20 already? At that rate, they'll reach Firefox 100 in a decade. Frankly, it sounds quite ridiculous.
- cpeterso 14y ago
  So? Chrome's dev channel is version 25. Plus, Chrome has a shorter beta testing cycle than Firefox, so Chrome's version number will always outpace Firefox's.
  - azakai 14y ago
    Chrome has a shorter beta testing cycle? I thought both browsers had 6 weeks for that.
    - cpeterso 14y ago
      Chrome and Firefox both have 6 week release cycles, but Chrome does not have an equivalent to Firefox's Aurora channel. Aurora adds an extra 6 weeks from feature checkin to release. :\
      - azakai 14y ago
        Chrome: canary, dev, beta, release Firefox: nightly, aurora, beta, release Isn't Chrome dev the parallel to Firefox aurora?
        cpeterso 14y ago
        AFAICT, Canary is like Nightly and Dev is a ~weekly stable snapshot of Canary. So Dev is running parallel to Canary. On my machine, Canary is version 25.0.1365.1 and Dev is 25.0.1364.2, slightly behind. Beta is 24.0.1312.25.
        azakai 14y ago
        Oh, I didn't realize that. I don't see this written anywhere though, the best I could find is a quote from Paul Irish that features on Canary get to users in 11 weeks, "unless there is a delay".

82 points by twapi 14y ago

buster 14y ago

Is this good or bad? Does Firefox support H.264 on other OS like Mac or Linux without flash, too?

azakai 14y ago
There are bugs open on doing that and progress on them. I think the windows one was first to land on nightly.
cube13 14y ago
Firefox only supports H.264 on Win7 and above because MS provided a plugin for the MS-provided codec. I don't believe that OSX or Linux provide it, which is why Firefox does not support it natively. Hopefully this means that they've finally worked out an agreement for licensing, and can support it.
- protomyth 14y ago
  OS X has H.264 available to all developers without additional licensing fees. Why would Firefox need to have a separate licensing agreement?
- 0x006A 14y ago
  You know, instead of writing things without checking you could have looked this up: i.e. via the tracking bug in bugzilla: Support H.264/AAC/MP3 video/audio playback on desktop Firefox (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=799318 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=799318) On Linux Firefox will use GStreamer, the same backend also used in Firefox OS, its not enabled in the nightly builds since not all distros have the right version of GStreamer and it ca not be loaded dynamically right now (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=794282 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=794282) For OS X the plan seams to be to use AV Foundations but no patch has been submitted so far. (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=801521 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=801521)
  - cube13 14y ago
    None of those bugs are resolved, so where was I wrong? In fact, there's this bug for H.264 support: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=541286 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=541286 It was raised in January, and it's status is: "RESOLVED WONTFIX" The stable Firefox build, as of today(12/19/2012) does not support those codecs.
    - doublec 14y ago
      We are implementing support on desktop using OS frameworks where we can. So far we have: - support for Linux via GStreamer landed but not built by default. It needs a bit more work. - support for Windows 7 and above which the OP post is about - Mac OS X is not yet underway but is planned. - Hardware H.264 decoding on Android phones via libstagefright. Some phones supported and enabled by default. Some supported but disabled at the moment. Some unsupported. - Hardware H.264 decoding on Firefox OS/B2G enabled by default, implemented via libstagefright. Phone vendors provide the binary blobs to do the decoding.
      - 0x006A 14y ago
        will you enable H.264 support only on desktops once you have working backends for Windows/Linux/OS X or will they be enabled by default as they are working? Just wondering if there will be stable releases of Firefox where some platforms have H.264 decodes and some don't.
        doublec 14y ago
        They will be enabled by default as they are working. We already have the issue of some platforms having it and others not. Some Android devices have it with Firefox for Android and some don't for example. Linux distro's could enable the GStreamer backend and gain it while others don't as another. For detection sites should use the API "canPlayType" and similar functionality to detect if the browser supports playback.
  - doublec 14y ago
- duaneb 14y ago
  It was a pretty big deal a while ago that quicktime support H.264; off hand, I'm pretty sure they supported it for years before MS did. If firefox supports quicktime, they support H.264. EDIT: Well, I'll eat my hat. I'm not sure why Firefox needs a different licensing agreement on OSX when they COULD just hook into quicktime without any licensing fees at all. I'm probably grossly misunderstanding the situation. EDIT2: Ok, so I guess AVFoundation is just the objective-c frontend for OSX's media libs. I can't for the life of me understand why it took them so long to implement.
  - tedmielczarek 14y ago
    a) We decided not to support h.264 for non-technical reasons (patent-encumbrance etc) for quite some time. b) We don't have infinite developer resources, so it just hasn't gotten done since then.
doublec 14y ago
Firefox on Linux has GStreamer but it's turned off at build time. Developers can build with it to test it. At some point it'll be enabled by default, or distros can enable it for their builds, to get H.264 support.

jakerocheleau 14y ago

Yeah I'm struggling to determine if this really is a big step. I'm not sure what the difference is between "Firefox Nightly" and regular old Firefox. But honestly, most browsers support H.264/MPEG-4 AVC at this point(especially mobile). I would really like to see this become the primary codec for streaming web video. It has excellent compression ratios, much better than webm or flv and it's the perfect encoding type for HD videos.

ck2 14y ago
It's a huge step for encoding videos in just one format for all browsers. Even on youtube, 50% of the videos I try to see cannot be watched without flash.
- PleaseStand 14y ago
  "Videos with ads are not supported (they will play in the Flash player)". http://www.youtube.com/html5 http://www.youtube.com/html5
- ciupicri 14y ago
  For all browsers running on the same operating system i.e. Windows.
- Yaggo 14y ago
  You can watch those without Flash by faking your UA string (try e.g. iPad). Feature detection, Google?
montecarl 14y ago
I believe that "Nightly" refers to the nightly build. That is it is a build of Firefox that follows the current development branch.
azakai 14y ago
Nightly is the build generated each night from the latest trunk code. After 6 weeks, nightly becomes aurora, which is more stable (not updated each night). Then after 6 weeks, it becomes beta and is tested by a wide audience. After 6 more weeks, it is released as the current stable version.

ck2 14y ago

Firefox 20 moves to aurora channel on January 6th so it will get a little more exposure then. This means that finally you can encode all your videos into just one format for all browsers, desktop and mobile. Well, one format but probably two bitrates.

HelloMcFly 14y ago

Does that mean soon I'll be able to control playback speed on Coursera and Khan Academy (presuming I've signed up for HTML5 beta in YouTube, which I have)? Anyone know?

dmnd 14y ago
If this new H.264 support in Firefox means that you can control playback speed on YouTube itself, you should also be able to control the speed on Khan Academy (or any other site that uses YouTube's iframe embed).
- doublec 14y ago
  Support for HTML's playbackRate API was landed a few weeks back. See bug 495040 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=495040 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=495040 This means that sites that control playback speed using the HTML media API should work.

mtgx 14y ago

I wonder why they gave up on this issue. I think it's because of Firefox OS. But all new chips support hardware acceleration for VP8, so I don't get it. Also, VP9, which is the codec Google started working on since they bought On2, is starting to be implemented in Chromium, along with Opus inside WebM. In the end I don't blame them too much, though. They seemed to have tried to take an even bigger stance pro-VP8, than Google itself, at least publicly. Google could've made the WebM player the default one for Youtube a long time ago, and only leave the Flash one as fallback, much like Apple took the stance with h.264 and gave up on Flash years ago, and then jumpstart the momentum for VP8. But they never did that. Mozilla alone certainly didn't have the power to turn the whole web towards VP8. I think Google could've done it with Youtube, especially considering all their videos are already encoded in VP8. VP8 is also the chosen codec for WebRTC.

kibwen 14y ago
If you're curious why, see this mailing list thread for the discussion: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.platform/-xTei5rYThU/DkM9AIbkNNIJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.platform/-xTei5r... Here's the money quote from none other than Andreas Gal: "I do believe this war is lost. Just look around. Almost none of the content users want to watch is available in WebM. The only reason desktop is usable is because of Flash, a proprietary plugin, playing video for us (in H.264, mostly). Even Google, supposedly a proponent of open codecs, never fully converted youtube and never dropped H.264 from Chrome. Taking a principled (I would at this point prefer 'stubborn' I think) stance on H.264 won't change reality. It just hurts us and our users. Firefox got to the point where we are on desktop today by embracing reality. In the early days we started supporting IE-isms like document.all that were god awfully ugly and non-standard. But it was needed for compatibility so we can give people a usable web experience. The web uses H.264. Thats an unpleasant fact, but its a fact. We have to support it whether we like it or not, so we can be around for the next round and continue to influence the web for the better." So to say that they "gave up" isn't the whole story. Mozilla recognized that this wasn't a hill worth dying upon, and are willing to make sacrifices in order to remain relevant in the pursuit of keeping the web open.
Someone 14y ago
But what will they do for Firefox OS? Leave it out? Get OEMs on board, and have them pay the license fee? Add an 'in app purchase' where users can buy H.264 decoding?

twoodfin 14y ago

On a related note, has Google officially dropped their plans to remove H.264 from Chrome? They made a big deal about it a couple of years ago, but it's still there, no?

zobzu 14y ago
seems it was more about marketing than anything :( they probably dropped the ball midway for reasons similar to firefox
- polshaw 14y ago
  >[google] probably dropped the ball midway for reasons similar to firefox Sorry, i really can't accept this. Google absolutely had it in their power to move us away from h264. If youtube, chrome, android and firefox were all webM centric, it would become the main codec used on the web for video (to be honest, youtube alone would be capable of doing this). Users (that would be >60% of the web) would blame the content provider if videos did not work, forcing them to adopt webM, in a post-flash world. Compare this to mozilla, with no online video presence, and standing alone, where users would blame firefox and move to chrome. I don't really understand google's motivation, but perhaps they were (irrationally?) fearful of losing users to IE/safari.. or the influence of iOS?
  - ZeroGravitas 14y ago
    It was a good effort from Google but just too late to win that particular battle. They needed H.264 for mobile, just like Firefox OS because Apple had already made that the de-facto standard. They obviously came to the same conclusion as Mozilla, but being corporation rather than a charity they had less reason to be forthcoming about the fact that they'd failed to achieve their aim. But Google and Mozilla are both key to the future of royalty-free codecs with Opus, VP9, WebRTC etc. particularly via the coming global dominance of Android so I don't really see where the benefit of pointing fingers and finding traitors is, there's plenty of villains on the opposing side if you want someone to be angry at.

cpearce 14y ago

Note H.264 support in Firefox is only available on Windows 7, and soon Vista. So if you want to support Windows XP, you will still need WebM, Ogg, or Flash fallback.

prodigal_erik 14y ago
For WinXP do you need to transcode, or can you just serve a lightweight player UI that use H.264 support built into the Flash plugin?
- cpearce 14y ago
  It depends. You'll get better integration into the browser if you transcode. But if you're doing the "YouTube testcase", just using a Flash player fallback (without transcoding) would probably suit your needs adequately.
- acdha 14y ago
  Use something like mediaelement.js which uses standard formats first and falls back to Flash if not - XP is a legacy platform so there's no point in investing time on it.

pepijndevos 14y ago

Will Mac also get this? I'm not sure, but I think this CoreAudio, CoreVideo and friends might have this stuff.

dbcooper 14y ago
They plan to implement OSX support soon. Here's the bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=801521 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=801521

notatoad 14y ago

more accurately, OS media decoders are now supported on firefox. Firefox isn't actually providing support for h.264, they're just exposing your operating system's video decoders. so if your OS doesn't have h.264 support, you're not going to have it in firefox.

thristian 14y ago
As far as I know, the only reasonably common desktop OS to lack H.264 support out of the box is Windows XP, and Mozilla plans to use Flash to decode H.264 video there. Well, I guess Linux also doesn't support H.264 unless you're in a jurisdiction that doesn't allow software patents, or you're willing to be a scofflaw, but there's not much Mozilla can do about that. :(
- icebraining 14y ago
  You can actually get a licensed codec for Linux, if you're willing to pay for it, like the Fluendo[1]. Personally, I just use x264. Fuck MPEG-LA. [1]: http://www.fluendo.com/shop/product/complete-set-of-playback-plugins/ http://www.fluendo.com/shop/product/complete-set-of-playback...

devcpp 14y ago

Wow, they're at 20 already? At that rate, they'll reach Firefox 100 in a decade. Frankly, it sounds quite ridiculous.

cpeterso 14y ago
So? Chrome's dev channel is version 25. Plus, Chrome has a shorter beta testing cycle than Firefox, so Chrome's version number will always outpace Firefox's.
- azakai 14y ago
  Chrome has a shorter beta testing cycle? I thought both browsers had 6 weeks for that.
  - cpeterso 14y ago
    Chrome and Firefox both have 6 week release cycles, but Chrome does not have an equivalent to Firefox's Aurora channel. Aurora adds an extra 6 weeks from feature checkin to release. :\
    - azakai 14y ago
      Chrome: canary, dev, beta, release Firefox: nightly, aurora, beta, release Isn't Chrome dev the parallel to Firefox aurora?
      - cpeterso 14y ago
        AFAICT, Canary is like Nightly and Dev is a ~weekly stable snapshot of Canary. So Dev is running parallel to Canary. On my machine, Canary is version 25.0.1365.1 and Dev is 25.0.1364.2, slightly behind. Beta is 24.0.1312.25.
        azakai 14y ago
        Oh, I didn't realize that. I don't see this written anywhere though, the best I could find is a quote from Paul Irish that features on Canary get to users in 11 weeks, "unless there is a delay".