Firefox 33 Brings OpenH264 Support

[Guest]

gtk4 is due next year. Firefox hasn't even got 3 yet.

don't use redhat. firefox-gtk3 on arch is out of date at 31. Why isn't it part of the stable release already. It's been years.

It isn't part of the stable release because it is not stable.
Untill recently, 64bit support for firefox running cairo-gtk3 backend was lacking, plugins (flash...) didn't work at all and it was often crashing and being unstable.
If you can code, feel free to go help mozilla and make it happen, if you can't or won't, then stop crying.

[Calinou]

Also Thunderbird looks like its from 2005.

No, it looks like it's from 2012-2014. That said, Mozilla doesn't believe in e-mail clients anymore so much, this is why it is left in maintenance mode.

[joh22n]

Mozilla doesn't believe in e-mail clients anymore so much, this is why it is left in maintenance mode.

Mozilla has said that Thunderbird already has all the features that most people need and there is no demand for continued innovation there which is why is in "stability and security" mode. That is not equal to "doesn't believe in email clients".

[TheBlackCat]

Mozilla has said that Thunderbird already has all the features that most people need and there is no demand for continued innovation there which is why is in "stability and security" mode. That is not equal to "doesn't believe in email clients".

Which, of course, is utter baloney. For example it doesn't have support for basic standards like carddav.

[uid313]

Mozilla has said that Thunderbird already has all the features that most people need and there is no demand for continued innovation there which is why is in "stability and security" mode. That is not equal to "doesn't believe in email clients".

There is lots of demand for secure emailing. Especially since the NSA revelations of mass surveillance.

So there is a demand for email software with easy-to-use encryption.

[joh22n]

There is lots of demand for secure emailing. Especially since the NSA revelations of mass surveillance.

So there is a demand for email software with easy-to-use encryption.

I haven't used any of them myself but there seem to be plugins for that. Enigmail for example.

Which, of course, is utter baloney. For example it doesn't have support for basic standards like carddav.

This, like the encryption feature, I would imagine, is important for a very small minority. A regular user probably has not even heard about carddav, they have their contacts right there in Thunderbird contacts list. And for those who need it, a quick search revealed that there is a plugin for that too.

[uid313]

I haven't used any of them myself but there seem to be plugins for that. Enigmail for example.

Yes, there are plugins for that and often it is complicated to setup cryptography, you have to investigate plugins, make a choice, then configure it, generate keys pairs, distribute public keys, import keys, etc. Very complicated.

Mozilla needs to make cryptography easy. They need to make it "just work", without hassle.
Right now cryptography is just a headache, it shouldn't be like that.

[TheBlackCat]

This, like the encryption feature, I would imagine, is important for a very small minority. A regular user probably has not even heard about carddav, they have their contacts right there in Thunderbird contacts list.

The advantage of carddav is it allows you to sync your contacts with web clients like gmail. It is also important for enterprise setups.

[Luke]

Use Gstreamer for ful H264 support

Hmm, so can Firefox use H.264 MSE now? That's needed for 1080p videos on YouTube. Up to now they only supported VP9 on MSE, and even then just barely.

Firefox also supports Gstreamer 1.0 and will use it. There is a bug in the plugin control page: it lists the Cisco plugin, saying it "will be installed shortly" even when using gstreamer. I don't know how it would respond to finding both at once, but if you go to about:config, select "H264" in filter, you can set media.gmp-gmpopenh264.enabled to false and set media.gmp-gmpopenh264.provider.enabled to false, at which point it will ignore the Cisco option entirely and use your system gstreamer instead.

One potential issue over time is this: if one plugin becomes far more common than the other over time, using the less common one might become fingerprintable. Most Windows installs will need the Cisco plugin, most Linux installs already have gstreamer. If the Cisco plugin can't handle the H264 profiles most often seen online, than the gstreamer one will surely predominate in browsers showing a "linux" useragent. I'm not sure what is meant by "base" and "high" profiles, but I do know that the old H264 options I cut and pasted out of kdenlive a couple years ago (from H264 rendering section) still work today and are playable using VDPAU hardware acceleration in the open Radeon driver with AMD Evergreen (r600-HD5000 series) or later graphics.

[Gusar]

@Luke: GreatEmerald isn't asking about h264 support in general, but specifically about MSE & H.264, because it's needed for 1080p videos (Youtube serves 1080p videos via DASH and that requires specific MSE support, non-DASH videos only go up to 720p). And the answer is: Firefox's MSE support is still too incomplete, so no MSE & H.264 yet and thus no 1080p on Youtube. Going by the current status in the nightlies, don't expect MSE & H.264 until at least Firefox 36.