7 ms·

I think you're barking up the wrong tree... And that it has the potential to blow up in Firefox's face. Remember what happened to html5 video. Everyone but Fir

I think you're barking up the wrong tree... And that it has the potential to blow up in Firefox's face. Remember what happened to html5 video. Everyone but Firefox was pragmatic, and implemented h.264 -- primarily, but not only for hardware acceleration reasons. Years later, Webkit-based browsers are ubiquitous, and Mozilla is developing a phone OS nobody will care about, in a desperate effort to become relevant again. Imo, Mozilla ought to spare itself another embarrassment by being the only guys in the room with the contrarian opinion. Take the issue to the W3C directly -- or for that matter vote for your local pirate party. HN and other tech news venues might be the correct places to recruit support, but you ultimately want to lobby your case directly.

Udo 13y ago
What drove me to Chrome at the time was the resource hunger and the inferior UI of Firefox, not the video thing. If DRM is the consensus, Mozilla should (and probably for technical reasons must) have the contrarian opinion. It would be enough to make me switch back, actually.
- PhasmaFelis 13y ago
  I like Chrome. I think it's a better browser than Firefox. Having to switch back, after several years settling into Chrome's extensions and configurations, would really piss me off. But I'll do it if Chrome implements this bullshit and Firefox doesn't. Wonder if I've still got tabs saved from the last time I seriously used Firefox, years ago. Probably not...
  - jotm 13y ago
    Does it finally have good flash and JS blockers? Regardless, i hate the tab system and address bar search in Chrome, wish it was like Firefox's, then I'd switch because it's faster...
  - nine_k 13y ago
    Bookmark all tabs, exit one browser, open another, import the bookmarks. Mozilla and Chrome can import each other's bookmarks. BTW I switched to Firefox on my laptop since it seems to be much less resource-hungry than Chrome. Not painful.
  - babby 13y ago
    I use both browsers regularly, but Firefox out of preference. It amazes me at how under performing chrome has become over the years. Font rendering, for one. The fact that they STILL don't have DirectWrite font rendering on Windows, something that has been with IE and FF since FF 3.6, amazes me. Good luck trying to get a webfont to render the same (or look any good) in Chrome as it does in IE and FF on Winderps. The sheer fact that it isn't IE for once... The font thing, while somewhat recent in usage, should have been in Chrome ages ago. Not going to bother getting into Chromes other more critical flaws as I feel like these threads devolve into this kind of shit too easily. Just sucks that Chrome has gone from this cool browser that actually is progressive, to some kind of Ad-friendly extension of Google that just qualifies as "better than IE!". Methinks you should jump on FF, it's better, and not because it may not support some arbitrary HTMl5 spec that we wont see for half a decade.
    - OWaz 13y ago
      The thing about Chrome is that while the font rendering is horrible the dev tools are super awesome. At work I end up using FF for reading text and Chrome for inspecting/debugging.
      - chris_wot 13y ago
        What's your opinion of Firefox's new developer tools?
        chrismonsanto 13y ago
        Firebug is much better. - Tools like YSlow and PageSpeed require Firebug. - You can't disable the browser cache from FF devtools, which really sucks when you are trying to debug a broken redirect. - When inspecting an element in FF devtools, :before and :after CSS properties will not be shown. I wasted many hours debugging a CSS refactor because of this (imagine going up the DOM, comparing computed CSS properties until you reach the root). Both Firebug and Chrome devtools will show :before and :after properties. I think Firebug and the Chrome devtools are comparable in quality.
  - thaumasiotes 13y ago
    I switched from firefox to chrome because of firefox's chronic memory leaks, and decided to live without extensions. Now I've switched back because firefox won't attempt to load tabs until you actually focus them.
  - aragot 13y ago
    +1, switched to Chrome with regret, because of Ff's bloating UI in 3-3.6 and its accompanying slowness. -1 to the logic of switching "if they implement drm": If your drmized content isn't available in FF, you'll have all incentives to come back. Unfortunately.
    - cabalamat 13y ago
      > -1 to the logic of switching "if they implement drm": If your drmized content isn't available in FF, you'll have all incentives to come back. No I won't. I'll either find an uncrippled version of the content -- for example on TPB -- or I simply won't look at it. DRM is a perversion of the WWW, and Berners-Lee is wrong to allow his invention to be sullied in this way. The web has been successful because it consists of open standards which means anyone can build on it. Just as tcp/ip is an open standard and Berners-Lee didn't need anyone's permission to build http and html. Take away that openness, and you'll be destroying something very valuable. If the MAFIAA don't like the open web and want a locked-down system, let them build their own. I'm sure it'll be every bit as successful as Windows RT or the Ford Edsel were.
      - untog 13y ago
        I think aragot was using 'you' to mean 'the user'. While you may be motivated to find uncrippled versions of the content, you can rest assured that the vast majority of users will not, and will just switch browser.
        cabalamat 13y ago
        You're probably right, although having said that I know lots of people who don't have an IT background who use BitTorrent because it is less hassle than DRM.
    - devcpp 13y ago
      Please consider switching back to FF, at least for the same reasons, if not for all the other ones (FOSS, no backdoors and so on). If you want the same look as Chrome, try the UX nightlies. Butter smooth too. Best browser ever.
  - fafner 13y ago
    Give FF a try again. It has vastly improved since FF 3.6.
    - PhasmaFelis 13y ago
      Yeah, sounds like this is a good time to do that.
  - toyg 13y ago
    Chrome already implements it [1], it's in your browser right now. I personally use Safari, but if Mozilla supports this pledge, I'll move back. [1] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list?can=1&q=EME&colspec=ID+Pri+M+Iteration+ReleaseBlock+Cr+Status+Owner+Summary+OS+Modified&x=m&y=releaseblock&cells=tiles https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list?can=1&q=EME&c...
    - chris_wot 13y ago
      It's a draft that's still changing. How are they supporting a moving target?
      - zobzu 13y ago
        update every 6 weeks
        chris_wot 13y ago
        How many CDMs have they created? Genuinely interested.
        toyg 13y ago
        http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=275788 http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=275788 "Part 2 will incorporate the EME API with the Widevine CDM and is slated for a later release (M31)"
        chris_wot 13y ago
        OK, and what does the Widevine CDM entail? Does it run on all operating systems?
        chris_wot 13y ago
        It appears it runs on Linux and Windows, but not on ARM devices.
  - mkr-hn 13y ago
    I switched back to Firefox when Chrome's performance slid to the point where it was unusable after a day. I forgot what it was like to have middle click work correctly.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- Fuxy 13y ago
  I'm probably the only guy here that never switched to Chrome. I wasn't impressed by it's lack of functionality when it launched and didn't think giving up functionality i use for speed was a good idea. Then Firefox became faster and now i got the best of both worlds though Chrome did grow over that time and now they have everything I would need but I have no reason to switch. I really hope Firefox puts its foot down and refuses to implement DRM I mean it's an open source browser this should be unacceptable.
  - gglitch 13y ago
    I also never switched, for ideological reasons. I've been hooked by the Mozilla Foundation's consistent messaging on freedom.
    - themstheones 13y ago
      The only thing they ever did wrong in firefox was removing <blink>. It was in the Book of Mozilla; you can't contradict that.
- fauigerzigerk 13y ago
  I switched back to Firefox from Chrome a few months ago (I still use Chrome for Gmail) because I found that the resource consumption issue has been turned on its head.
  - liljimmytables 13y ago
    This has been my experience too. Also the search bar is fantastic in Firefox.
    - fauigerzigerk 13y ago
      True. Tab switching with % <search term> is extremely convenient.
garfor_nrvnsqr 13y ago
Considering mozilla is basically the last bastion of freedom in the world of major web browsers, I sincerely hope they ignore your advice
austinheap 13y ago
Mozilla had one great strength.
shmerl 13y ago
Mozilla should refuse adding any of this junk into the browser.
devx 13y ago
Are you saying Firefox lost users because they refused to support h.264? That's bull. If they did lose users it was for completely different reasons. I remember being very disappointed with them for choosing h.264 in the end, but even more disappointed with Google for not making VP8 the default codec in Youtube, to have Mozilla's back (with fallback to Flash). So what if MPAA goes to Mozilla next and tells them to adopt whatever auto-DMCA/censorship schemes they come up with next. Is Mozilla supposed to just accept it because "all the others are doing it"? I sure hope they wouldn't.
buster 13y ago
Actually Mozilla did the right thing and theora and webm are as widely available in browsers (by count). The only two companies that blocked free codecs are the companies part of the MPEG-LA! Which means the get money from h264 content. It still sucks very much that the W3C did not force a codec in the standard, the current situation is awful! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video
- gsnedders 13y ago
  How does the W3C force a codec in the standard? Apple and Microsoft had outright stated that if the standard said one MUST support Ogg/Theora/Vorbis they would simply chose to violate the standard.
  - buster 13y ago
    I dont unerstand. So the right way to form a standard is to follow the biggest corporation and implement their formats rather then create fair chances for everyone, is that it?
    - gsnedders 13y ago
      Nobody follows standards the W3C publish just because the W3C publish them. Indeed, if they have a good reason (or sometimes not so good reason) not to, they won't. Publishing a standard that says "the user agent MUST support Ogg/Theora/Vorbis" doesn't change anything until you motivate the company that implementing that standard is more important than anything else. And as long as IE, Safari, and Chrome all supported H.264 (etc.) anyway, most web developers would just use H.264 thus giving MS, Apple, and Google no (external) motivation in terms of site-compatibility to support Ogg/Theora/Vorbis, and if the market (i.e., browser users) don't care about it — they won't add support.
comex 13y ago
It might blow up in Firefox's face, a long time from now. For now, there isn't even any standard for how the decryption algorithms should be implemented as plugins, so it's hard to see how Mozilla could implement it in the first place, let alone be pressured into implementing it. Also, H.264 was already dominant on the web when the video tag was introduced, it was far better than Theora, it's slightly better than V8, and as you mention, it has hardware acceleration - all strong reasons for people to use it regardless of their opinion on patents. EME's support is mostly limited to a small number of companies that want to use it and doesn't seem inevitable at all. The situations are very different.
mercurial 13y ago
> Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) form the basis for a whole bunch of silliness, from proposals to prevent us viewing JavaScript source, to not being able to view text because of a font specification. That's what you're backing. It may sound odd, but I imagine a large number of folks on HN disagree with you.
ZeroGravitas 13y ago
The vast, overwhelming majority of video watched since then has been H.264 via Flash (since it was more "pragmatic" to do so), so I struggle to see how that would have affected Mozilla in any major way. If flash had adopted VP8, (like they said they would) then things might have been very different. And if your talking about mobile browsers, smartphones are dominated by two platforms, each owned by the corporate parents of two webkit-based browsers, one of whom doesn't allow you to install other browsers at all.
- caiusdurling 13y ago
  > one of whom doesn't allow you to install other browsers at all. Nitpick, you can install other browsers on iOS. Don't think you can make them the default handler for URLs from other apps however, but most apps still ship their own web view inside the app making that a mostly moot point in my experience.
  - ZeroGravitas 13y ago
    Yes, that's an issue too but what I specifically meant by that was mainly that you can install wrappers round the provided Webkit, but not, for example, Mozilla's gecko, Opera's presto, or Google's Blink browser engine or even your own spin on Webkit. So saying that Webkit is ubiquitous isn't saying as much about webkit's inherent quality or Mozilla's mistakes as it would if there was a free choice in the matter.
  - ChikkaChiChi 13y ago
    Nitpick the nitpick, you can install applications on iOS that are forced to use the not-as-up-to-date-as-Mobile-Safari WebUIView. They are not allowed to roll their own engine.
bad_user 13y ago
> Remember what happened to html5 video What did happen exactly? The desktop is still not playing Html5 video, Flash is still used. I still can't go fully with Html5 on YouTube. On Android mobile phones, Firefox had a rough time not because of Html5 video, but because they were slow to develop a usable version. The first versions I tried were very unstable and ate too much memory compared to the stock browser. But you know, it's evolving and on Android right now I think it's better than Chrome, minus one or two annoyances. Plus, they took the pragmatic approach, as they fall-back on the operating system's support for H.264 - remember open-source projects cannot bundle H.264 by themselves. Chrome is not open-source, while Chromium is and Chromium does not come with H.264 (although you can make it work on Ubuntu at least by installing the necessary code packages). How is Html5 video related in any way with Firefox's marketshare? > Years later, Webkit-based browsers are ubiquitous, and Mozilla is developing a phone OS nobody will care about You're probably speaking about mobile web browsers. People here forget how big the desktop is and it's not going anywhere. And the WebKit browsers you're talking about are incompatible with each other. As for Firefox OS - personally I care about it, because it's tackling a market that has been ignored by both iOS and Android and because it leads the way to new Web APIs. So there you have it - you can't say that nobody cares about it, when clearly I do. > Mozilla ought to spare itself another embarrassment by being the only guys in the room with the contrarian opinion Maybe you should spare yourself the embarrassment of not recognizing that Mozilla made the web better precisely because of its contrarian opinion.
- hexley 13y ago
  Doesn't VLC, MPlayer etc bundle h264? How can you say they aren't open source?
  - pgeorgi 13y ago
    VLC even ships with everything to "crack" DVDs. Those tools are flying under the radar, but Firefox probably won't (with two direct competitors being part of MPEG-LA). Firefox makes money (through the search engine integration at least), VLC et al do not. It might also help that VLC is a french project. Laws and patents are sufficiently different that it takes effort to build a case, while for US cases the MPEG-LA + members have probably a template on file where they only have to fill in the victim.
darklajid 13y ago
Webkit-based browsers are ubiquitous Are they? All the corporate guys I know that jumped on Chrome jumped to (..) IE10 now. Everyone else still uses Firefox around me and wonders why someone would ever install a browser from an advertisement company. Have you used Firefox on Android? I've to admit that running Aurora is kind of hardcore (daily updates..?), but - wow. It's not just a really good browser, it's beautiful on top of that. I'm really looking forward to see devices with that OS nobody will care about - because all alternatives suck or died (WebOS was promising, so was Maemo/Meego. I'm also interested in sailfishOS). Your whole comment is weird. Your claims make no sense from this point and I have to disagree with literally every single line you wrote here. My hope is that FF/Mozilla _will_ pledge not to implement any of these idiotic ideas.
- untog 13y ago
  Webkit browsers are ubiquitous - they're on almost every smartphone sold these days, for a start. Everyone else still uses Firefox around me and wonders why someone would ever install a browser from an advertisement company. I have no idea who you have around you, but that is a very minority opinion. Chrome's usage keeps going up and Firefox usage goes down. I've used Firefox on Android (including Aurora) and it's fine. I don't see what makes it better than Chrome. Though I don't think your whole comment is "weird", I think that we both have different experiences.
  - darklajid 13y ago
    I was mostly talking about the desktop, other people already commented on the 'forced' Webkit market share on mobile devices. Firefox around me: From technical people to guys that use mostly Excel, everyone here uses FF (apart from the IE10+ guys at work). Heck, I learned about some of these strange 'take FF, compile it for amd64 and call it "optimized"' FF derived browsers through people that .. are average not-into-computers-really joes. The only people that DO install Chrome around here (I know, I know, nothing but anecdotes to back this) are elderly family members that click that annoying huge 'You should really download our browser, it's teh best thing ever' button on Google - and get back to launch IE again the next day, because they didn't understand the whole thing, really. I don't want to take Chrome away from anyone, I just dislike the 'Meh, FF OS is useless anyway, their browser is becoming obsolete and they just meddle with politics' dismissal in the original comment. A 'desperate effort to become relevant again'? Why (and in what world) would they be irrelevant in the first place?

Udo 13y ago

What drove me to Chrome at the time was the resource hunger and the inferior UI of Firefox, not the video thing. If DRM is the consensus, Mozilla should (and probably for technical reasons must) have the contrarian opinion. It would be enough to make me switch back, actually.

PhasmaFelis 13y ago
I like Chrome. I think it's a better browser than Firefox. Having to switch back, after several years settling into Chrome's extensions and configurations, would really piss me off. But I'll do it if Chrome implements this bullshit and Firefox doesn't. Wonder if I've still got tabs saved from the last time I seriously used Firefox, years ago. Probably not...
- jotm 13y ago
  Does it finally have good flash and JS blockers? Regardless, i hate the tab system and address bar search in Chrome, wish it was like Firefox's, then I'd switch because it's faster...
- nine_k 13y ago
  Bookmark all tabs, exit one browser, open another, import the bookmarks. Mozilla and Chrome can import each other's bookmarks. BTW I switched to Firefox on my laptop since it seems to be much less resource-hungry than Chrome. Not painful.
- babby 13y ago
  I use both browsers regularly, but Firefox out of preference. It amazes me at how under performing chrome has become over the years. Font rendering, for one. The fact that they STILL don't have DirectWrite font rendering on Windows, something that has been with IE and FF since FF 3.6, amazes me. Good luck trying to get a webfont to render the same (or look any good) in Chrome as it does in IE and FF on Winderps. The sheer fact that it isn't IE for once... The font thing, while somewhat recent in usage, should have been in Chrome ages ago. Not going to bother getting into Chromes other more critical flaws as I feel like these threads devolve into this kind of shit too easily. Just sucks that Chrome has gone from this cool browser that actually is progressive, to some kind of Ad-friendly extension of Google that just qualifies as "better than IE!". Methinks you should jump on FF, it's better, and not because it may not support some arbitrary HTMl5 spec that we wont see for half a decade.
  - OWaz 13y ago
    The thing about Chrome is that while the font rendering is horrible the dev tools are super awesome. At work I end up using FF for reading text and Chrome for inspecting/debugging.
    - chris_wot 13y ago
      What's your opinion of Firefox's new developer tools?
      - chrismonsanto 13y ago
        Firebug is much better. - Tools like YSlow and PageSpeed require Firebug. - You can't disable the browser cache from FF devtools, which really sucks when you are trying to debug a broken redirect. - When inspecting an element in FF devtools, :before and :after CSS properties will not be shown. I wasted many hours debugging a CSS refactor because of this (imagine going up the DOM, comparing computed CSS properties until you reach the root). Both Firebug and Chrome devtools will show :before and :after properties. I think Firebug and the Chrome devtools are comparable in quality.
- thaumasiotes 13y ago
  I switched from firefox to chrome because of firefox's chronic memory leaks, and decided to live without extensions. Now I've switched back because firefox won't attempt to load tabs until you actually focus them.
- aragot 13y ago
  +1, switched to Chrome with regret, because of Ff's bloating UI in 3-3.6 and its accompanying slowness. -1 to the logic of switching "if they implement drm": If your drmized content isn't available in FF, you'll have all incentives to come back. Unfortunately.
  - cabalamat 13y ago
    > -1 to the logic of switching "if they implement drm": If your drmized content isn't available in FF, you'll have all incentives to come back. No I won't. I'll either find an uncrippled version of the content -- for example on TPB -- or I simply won't look at it. DRM is a perversion of the WWW, and Berners-Lee is wrong to allow his invention to be sullied in this way. The web has been successful because it consists of open standards which means anyone can build on it. Just as tcp/ip is an open standard and Berners-Lee didn't need anyone's permission to build http and html. Take away that openness, and you'll be destroying something very valuable. If the MAFIAA don't like the open web and want a locked-down system, let them build their own. I'm sure it'll be every bit as successful as Windows RT or the Ford Edsel were.
    - untog 13y ago
      I think aragot was using 'you' to mean 'the user'. While you may be motivated to find uncrippled versions of the content, you can rest assured that the vast majority of users will not, and will just switch browser.
      - cabalamat 13y ago
        You're probably right, although having said that I know lots of people who don't have an IT background who use BitTorrent because it is less hassle than DRM.
  - devcpp 13y ago
    Please consider switching back to FF, at least for the same reasons, if not for all the other ones (FOSS, no backdoors and so on). If you want the same look as Chrome, try the UX nightlies. Butter smooth too. Best browser ever.
- fafner 13y ago
  Give FF a try again. It has vastly improved since FF 3.6.
  - PhasmaFelis 13y ago
    Yeah, sounds like this is a good time to do that.
- toyg 13y ago
  Chrome already implements it [1], it's in your browser right now. I personally use Safari, but if Mozilla supports this pledge, I'll move back. [1] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list?can=1&q=EME&colspec=ID+Pri+M+Iteration+ReleaseBlock+Cr+Status+Owner+Summary+OS+Modified&x=m&y=releaseblock&cells=tiles https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list?can=1&q=EME&c...
  - chris_wot 13y ago
    It's a draft that's still changing. How are they supporting a moving target?
    - zobzu 13y ago
      update every 6 weeks
      - chris_wot 13y ago
        How many CDMs have they created? Genuinely interested.
        toyg 13y ago
        http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=275788 http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=275788 "Part 2 will incorporate the EME API with the Widevine CDM and is slated for a later release (M31)"
        chris_wot 13y ago
        OK, and what does the Widevine CDM entail? Does it run on all operating systems?
        chris_wot 13y ago
        It appears it runs on Linux and Windows, but not on ARM devices.
- mkr-hn 13y ago
  I switched back to Firefox when Chrome's performance slid to the point where it was unusable after a day. I forgot what it was like to have middle click work correctly.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Fuxy 13y ago
I'm probably the only guy here that never switched to Chrome. I wasn't impressed by it's lack of functionality when it launched and didn't think giving up functionality i use for speed was a good idea. Then Firefox became faster and now i got the best of both worlds though Chrome did grow over that time and now they have everything I would need but I have no reason to switch. I really hope Firefox puts its foot down and refuses to implement DRM I mean it's an open source browser this should be unacceptable.
- gglitch 13y ago
  I also never switched, for ideological reasons. I've been hooked by the Mozilla Foundation's consistent messaging on freedom.
  - themstheones 13y ago
    The only thing they ever did wrong in firefox was removing <blink>. It was in the Book of Mozilla; you can't contradict that.
fauigerzigerk 13y ago
I switched back to Firefox from Chrome a few months ago (I still use Chrome for Gmail) because I found that the resource consumption issue has been turned on its head.
- liljimmytables 13y ago
  This has been my experience too. Also the search bar is fantastic in Firefox.
  - fauigerzigerk 13y ago
    True. Tab switching with % <search term> is extremely convenient.

garfor_nrvnsqr 13y ago

Considering mozilla is basically the last bastion of freedom in the world of major web browsers, I sincerely hope they ignore your advice

austinheap 13y ago

Mozilla had one great strength.

shmerl 13y ago

Mozilla should refuse adding any of this junk into the browser.

devx 13y ago

Are you saying Firefox lost users because they refused to support h.264? That's bull. If they did lose users it was for completely different reasons. I remember being very disappointed with them for choosing h.264 in the end, but even more disappointed with Google for not making VP8 the default codec in Youtube, to have Mozilla's back (with fallback to Flash). So what if MPAA goes to Mozilla next and tells them to adopt whatever auto-DMCA/censorship schemes they come up with next. Is Mozilla supposed to just accept it because "all the others are doing it"? I sure hope they wouldn't.

buster 13y ago

Actually Mozilla did the right thing and theora and webm are as widely available in browsers (by count). The only two companies that blocked free codecs are the companies part of the MPEG-LA! Which means the get money from h264 content. It still sucks very much that the W3C did not force a codec in the standard, the current situation is awful! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video

gsnedders 13y ago
How does the W3C force a codec in the standard? Apple and Microsoft had outright stated that if the standard said one MUST support Ogg/Theora/Vorbis they would simply chose to violate the standard.
- buster 13y ago
  I dont unerstand. So the right way to form a standard is to follow the biggest corporation and implement their formats rather then create fair chances for everyone, is that it?
  - gsnedders 13y ago
    Nobody follows standards the W3C publish just because the W3C publish them. Indeed, if they have a good reason (or sometimes not so good reason) not to, they won't. Publishing a standard that says "the user agent MUST support Ogg/Theora/Vorbis" doesn't change anything until you motivate the company that implementing that standard is more important than anything else. And as long as IE, Safari, and Chrome all supported H.264 (etc.) anyway, most web developers would just use H.264 thus giving MS, Apple, and Google no (external) motivation in terms of site-compatibility to support Ogg/Theora/Vorbis, and if the market (i.e., browser users) don't care about it — they won't add support.

comex 13y ago

It might blow up in Firefox's face, a long time from now. For now, there isn't even any standard for how the decryption algorithms should be implemented as plugins, so it's hard to see how Mozilla could implement it in the first place, let alone be pressured into implementing it. Also, H.264 was already dominant on the web when the video tag was introduced, it was far better than Theora, it's slightly better than V8, and as you mention, it has hardware acceleration - all strong reasons for people to use it regardless of their opinion on patents. EME's support is mostly limited to a small number of companies that want to use it and doesn't seem inevitable at all. The situations are very different.

mercurial 13y ago

> Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) form the basis for a whole bunch of silliness, from proposals to prevent us viewing JavaScript source, to not being able to view text because of a font specification. That's what you're backing. It may sound odd, but I imagine a large number of folks on HN disagree with you.

ZeroGravitas 13y ago

The vast, overwhelming majority of video watched since then has been H.264 via Flash (since it was more "pragmatic" to do so), so I struggle to see how that would have affected Mozilla in any major way. If flash had adopted VP8, (like they said they would) then things might have been very different. And if your talking about mobile browsers, smartphones are dominated by two platforms, each owned by the corporate parents of two webkit-based browsers, one of whom doesn't allow you to install other browsers at all.

caiusdurling 13y ago
> one of whom doesn't allow you to install other browsers at all. Nitpick, you can install other browsers on iOS. Don't think you can make them the default handler for URLs from other apps however, but most apps still ship their own web view inside the app making that a mostly moot point in my experience.
- ZeroGravitas 13y ago
  Yes, that's an issue too but what I specifically meant by that was mainly that you can install wrappers round the provided Webkit, but not, for example, Mozilla's gecko, Opera's presto, or Google's Blink browser engine or even your own spin on Webkit. So saying that Webkit is ubiquitous isn't saying as much about webkit's inherent quality or Mozilla's mistakes as it would if there was a free choice in the matter.
- ChikkaChiChi 13y ago
  Nitpick the nitpick, you can install applications on iOS that are forced to use the not-as-up-to-date-as-Mobile-Safari WebUIView. They are not allowed to roll their own engine.

bad_user 13y ago

> Remember what happened to html5 video What did happen exactly? The desktop is still not playing Html5 video, Flash is still used. I still can't go fully with Html5 on YouTube. On Android mobile phones, Firefox had a rough time not because of Html5 video, but because they were slow to develop a usable version. The first versions I tried were very unstable and ate too much memory compared to the stock browser. But you know, it's evolving and on Android right now I think it's better than Chrome, minus one or two annoyances. Plus, they took the pragmatic approach, as they fall-back on the operating system's support for H.264 - remember open-source projects cannot bundle H.264 by themselves. Chrome is not open-source, while Chromium is and Chromium does not come with H.264 (although you can make it work on Ubuntu at least by installing the necessary code packages). How is Html5 video related in any way with Firefox's marketshare? > Years later, Webkit-based browsers are ubiquitous, and Mozilla is developing a phone OS nobody will care about You're probably speaking about mobile web browsers. People here forget how big the desktop is and it's not going anywhere. And the WebKit browsers you're talking about are incompatible with each other. As for Firefox OS - personally I care about it, because it's tackling a market that has been ignored by both iOS and Android and because it leads the way to new Web APIs. So there you have it - you can't say that nobody cares about it, when clearly I do. > Mozilla ought to spare itself another embarrassment by being the only guys in the room with the contrarian opinion Maybe you should spare yourself the embarrassment of not recognizing that Mozilla made the web better precisely because of its contrarian opinion.

hexley 13y ago
Doesn't VLC, MPlayer etc bundle h264? How can you say they aren't open source?
- pgeorgi 13y ago
  VLC even ships with everything to "crack" DVDs. Those tools are flying under the radar, but Firefox probably won't (with two direct competitors being part of MPEG-LA). Firefox makes money (through the search engine integration at least), VLC et al do not. It might also help that VLC is a french project. Laws and patents are sufficiently different that it takes effort to build a case, while for US cases the MPEG-LA + members have probably a template on file where they only have to fill in the victim.

darklajid 13y ago

Webkit-based browsers are ubiquitous Are they? All the corporate guys I know that jumped on Chrome jumped to (..) IE10 now. Everyone else still uses Firefox around me and wonders why someone would ever install a browser from an advertisement company. Have you used Firefox on Android? I've to admit that running Aurora is kind of hardcore (daily updates..?), but - wow. It's not just a really good browser, it's beautiful on top of that. I'm really looking forward to see devices with that OS nobody will care about - because all alternatives suck or died (WebOS was promising, so was Maemo/Meego. I'm also interested in sailfishOS). Your whole comment is weird. Your claims make no sense from this point and I have to disagree with literally every single line you wrote here. My hope is that FF/Mozilla _will_ pledge not to implement any of these idiotic ideas.

untog 13y ago
Webkit browsers are ubiquitous - they're on almost every smartphone sold these days, for a start. Everyone else still uses Firefox around me and wonders why someone would ever install a browser from an advertisement company. I have no idea who you have around you, but that is a very minority opinion. Chrome's usage keeps going up and Firefox usage goes down. I've used Firefox on Android (including Aurora) and it's fine. I don't see what makes it better than Chrome. Though I don't think your whole comment is "weird", I think that we both have different experiences.
- darklajid 13y ago
  I was mostly talking about the desktop, other people already commented on the 'forced' Webkit market share on mobile devices. Firefox around me: From technical people to guys that use mostly Excel, everyone here uses FF (apart from the IE10+ guys at work). Heck, I learned about some of these strange 'take FF, compile it for amd64 and call it "optimized"' FF derived browsers through people that .. are average not-into-computers-really joes. The only people that DO install Chrome around here (I know, I know, nothing but anecdotes to back this) are elderly family members that click that annoying huge 'You should really download our browser, it's teh best thing ever' button on Google - and get back to launch IE again the next day, because they didn't understand the whole thing, really. I don't want to take Chrome away from anyone, I just dislike the 'Meh, FF OS is useless anyway, their browser is becoming obsolete and they just meddle with politics' dismissal in the original comment. A 'desperate effort to become relevant again'? Why (and in what world) would they be irrelevant in the first place?