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by matasar 5936 days ago
I believe Mozilla distributes Flash as a plugin in the Firefox download. If they don't, they certainly make special allowances to make Flash easier to download and install than other plugins.

I assume Firefox has a public API for video codecs, and they choose to distribute codecs or not. So I don't see the difference, really.
3 comments
WildUtah 5936 days ago
<i>Firefox has a public API for video codecs</i>

They really don't and they really should. Building a plugin architecture where users could decide based on their local laws which technology to use when some may be patent encumbered would be a big win for open source, standards, and freedom on the Internet.

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megaman821 5936 days ago
The Mozilla people already stated there is no technical reason they are not supporting H.264. It is idealogical. They are well aware that they could make it pluggable or use the system codecs, they just don't want to.
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Herring 5936 days ago
It seems like we went through this in the 90s with wmv/quicktime/etc. I can't recall why it failed & I'm not sure why it should be better this time around.
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blasdel 5936 days ago
Because there's a single, vendor-neutral, scriptable, unbranded API: <video>
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GHFigs 5936 days ago
I'm not sure why it should be better this time around.

Because today instead of WMV/QuickTime/etc. we have H.264/H.264/Flash (which streams H.264).

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kinetik 5936 days ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_services#St...

I see a lot of VP6 and Sorenson listed there. What we really have today is Flash/Flash/Flash. I'm curious about how much VC-1 use there is in the wild in the large Microsoft/Silverlight streaming video installations.

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kinetik 5936 days ago
I believe Mozilla distributes Flash as a plugin in the Firefox download.

This is most definitely false. Why make a claim like this when you could easily verify it?

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blasdel 5936 days ago
He's only misstating it somewhat.

Firefox (at least on Windows) has a special Flash installer baked into it for several years -- if it can't find the plugin, it prompts you with an infobar, which then kicks off a streamlined installer that downloads a xpi package and installs it even without administrative privileges.

When they first implemented it, they got a special license to distribute the Flash xpi from addons.mozilla.org, and did so happily. Mozilla has absolutely distributed the Flash binaries themselves before, but I think the file is hosted by Adobe these days.

Fairly recently they baked in a special Flash updater too -- if your Flash plugin has known security vulnerabilities Firefox will prompt you to automatically update it: http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/2009/09/16/helping-people-up...

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kinetik 5936 days ago
There's no "special Flash installer". I think you're talking about the Plugin Finder Service, which is generic and works with any plugin. PFS serves metadata that points the user to the vendor's plugin download page (possibly to a streamlined installer built by the plugin vendor): https://wiki.mozilla.org/PFS

The "special Flash updater" detects if the user has Flash installed and is out of date, and only if so, it points them to Adobe's website to download the latest version. This is likely to happen for all widely used plugins. Flash is the first because it's so widely installed. More details here: http://blog.mozilla.com/security/2009/09/04/helping-users-ke...

It's pretty easy to find this all out with a search engine, so I'm beginning to wonder if your "slightly incorrect" claims are deliberate misrepresentations. I'd question your agenda, but honestly I don't care. The facts are available for anybody with a search engine handy.

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blasdel 5936 days ago
Sure it's theoretically generic, but is there a single other plugin available through Mozilla's PFS server as an xpi? They have records for the other standard plugins, but those all use native installers. I can't find a dump of their database, and it looks like there's no way to enumerate it through the API.

Gnash and swfdec are available via Debian and Ubuntu's independent PFS servers as an xpi in their Mozilla forks, but not through Mozilla normally since I don't think their UI will present multiple options for one set of <embed> attributes.

The feature exists solely because Flash doesn't ship in the default installs of Windows (or in OEM installs in NPAPI form), or any of the Linux distros (just OS X).

Mozilla are collaborators: they don't have the moral high ground here.

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wmf 5936 days ago
I assume Firefox has a public API for video codecs

No, Theora is hardcoded in.

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