Tuesday, March 20th 2012
Mozilla Firefox To Pack H.264 Support
It looks like Mozilla has given in to the pressure of incorporating H.264 CODEC into its Firefox web-browser, and could incorporate it in future versions of the browser. The CODEC allows online videos utilizing H.264 format to run. Mozilla has been avoiding H.264 support since it is proprietary, riddled with patents, and requires Mozilla to purchase a license for millions of Dollars from MPEG-LA.
Mozilla has been trying to push for standards alternative to H.264, such as WebM, and the VP8 format. It had originally planned its push for an H.264-free web at a time when it was a much stronger player in the web-browser market, which now sees a strong presence of Google Chrome, which already features H.264. H.264 is superior to its alternatives, in being lighter on the system's resources (hence, lighter on the battery).
Sources:
Engadget, The Inquirer
Mozilla has been trying to push for standards alternative to H.264, such as WebM, and the VP8 format. It had originally planned its push for an H.264-free web at a time when it was a much stronger player in the web-browser market, which now sees a strong presence of Google Chrome, which already features H.264. H.264 is superior to its alternatives, in being lighter on the system's resources (hence, lighter on the battery).
14 Comments on Mozilla Firefox To Pack H.264 Support
:D
Really, It running well on my Google Chrome...
The H.264 group has quite a disturbing strategy.
- Mozilla will no longer be able to guarantee that their product is 100% open-standard/open-source (because it will contain some closed-source code),
- It won't be able to give away Firefox source-code which contains H.264 CODEC to just about anyone, because that could conflict with the license
- Browsers that are derived from the Firefox source (eg: Waterfox) will not have access to the H.264 CODEC.
- It will dent Mozilla's image in the OSS community.
In my opinion Mozilla should have flipped the bird at H.264 and carried on. H.264 web-content is still in its infancy, and lack of support from Firefox should instead hinder its adoption, not that of Firefox.Not sure if i understood this right but it sort of makes sense.
Jan 7, 2012
Waterfox has now been accepted as a project by Mozilla and has been placed on their website!
waterfoxproject.org/news/26/15/Powered-by-Mozilla-and-Waterfox-9-0-1.html
That's official enough for me. :toast: