Mozilla moves back to H.264 support

[Antony]

According to Mozilla considers H.264 video support after Google's WebM fails to gain traction article, Mozilla is proposing to move back to H.264 video support after some war against H.264 (or more likely, war against Apple).

Despite being a world organisation of “open source,” Mozilla clearly does not like H.264 which is open-source itself. Although H.264 is also free, the licensing says that it might not be free in the future (which I highly doubt so), but certain open-source extremists wouldn't have missed this point to bash Apple.

There was the free Ogg Theora video codec Mozilla (and many Mozilla followers) enjoyed and decided to use that format to fight against H.264. Apart from within certain extreme groups, Ogg Theora did not get well adopted.

Then, there's WebM from Mozilla's long time major financial supporter - Google.

Mozilla even tried to convince major video sites (apart from Google's YouTube) to switch to WebM. They declined. This made Firefox (and Gecko browsers) the only mainstream browser that does not support H.264.

H.264 is open-source, not an Apple technology. Except a number of open-source extremists automatically associates H.264 to Apple.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; en-US; rv:1.9.2.28) Gecko/20120306 AlexaToolbar/alxf-2.14 Firefox/3.6.28

[Edward]

A quick method to check if your web browser has H.264 support, is to go to http://www.youtube.com/html5

If it has a green check next to H.264, the browser has the support. Otherwise, it will display a red exclamation point, if it does not.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:11.0) Gecko/20120312 Firefox/11.0 SeaMonkey/2.8

[Fulvio]

Can anyone explain to me what this means to me, as an user? Never mind the politics.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:11.0) Gecko/20120312 Firefox/11.0 SeaMonkey/2.8

[Antony]

Can anyone explain to me what this means to me, as an user? Never mind the politics.

There are more online video are in H.264 than other promising format (codec). From user's point of view, a user can now use Mozilla to watch H.264 video online without the need to install additional H.264 video player (e.g. QuickTime Player, VLC media player, ... etc)
This should also mean that HTML5's <video> tag should also be better supported in Mozilla browser.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; en-US; rv:1.9.2.28) Gecko/20120306 AlexaToolbar/alxf-2.14 Firefox/3.6.28

[Edward]

The current versions of Firefox (11) and SeaMonkey (2.8, based on Firefox 11), do not support H.264 based on the test at the YouTube page I referenced above.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:11.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/11.0

[ncd]

The current versions of Firefox (11) and SeaMonkey (2.8, based on Firefox 11), do not support H.264 based on the test at the YouTube page I referenced above.

Edward,

Any idea when Mozilla will support H 264?

Tks.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.19pre) Gecko K-Meleon/1.6.0

[Fulvio]

On reading the original link, I see that it is from an Apple blog, which is, annoyingly hostile to Mozilla.
If there will be a switch, it will come with with v.13 (one can check the nightlies), and it may nor be so simple for one who will stick to WinXP, until the computer dies.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:11.0) Gecko/20120312 Firefox/11.0 SeaMonkey/2.8

[Edward]

I recall reading online from one of the SeaMonkey Status Meeting minutes, that Windows XP SP 2 would be the minimum OS that SeaMonkey would install on.

See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=723316

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:11.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/11.0

[ncd]

On reading the original link, I see that it is from an Apple blog, which is, annoyingly hostile to Mozilla.
If there will be a switch, it will come with with v.13 (one can check the nightlies), and it may nor be so simple for one who will stick to WinXP, until the computer dies.

Fulvio,

Ouch... I too use XP PRO SP3 and guess I'm on Flash forever. <sigh>

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.19pre) Gecko K-Meleon/1.6.0