Firefox 44.0 Primed For Release

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Firefox 44.0 Primed For Release

Firefox 44.0 is now available via FTP and other sources ahead of the planned Mozilla announcement in the hours ahead...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Firefox-44-Released

[bug77]

These releases are getting weirder and weirder. I got FF 44 final on my Windows machine before the weekend (I'm on the beta channel) and today it upgraded again to 44. Go figure.

[[Knuckles]]

"Support for VP9/WebM video support for systems lacking MP4/H.264"

It's not really for the systems lacking -- VP9 is a codec superior to H264. Weather it can fend off HEVC that's another matter, but I think it's a bit unfair to just bill it as the poor man's video codec.

[Gusar]

VP9 is a codec superior to H264.

No, it's not. I doubt even the format itself has the potential to be better than H.264, but when it comes to implementations, libvpx (the only publicly available encoder) is definitely inferior to the best H.264 implementations, notably x264. Unless you can provide an encoder test that shows otherwise (a visual test, not SSIM graphs).

Then there's the issue of hardware decoders, VP9 decoders are only starting to appear in PC hardware. That's why Firefox defaults to H.264 and only uses VP9 when hardware H.264 decoding isn't available (so on Linux, where Firefox still lacks VAAPI and VDPAU integration).

[karasu]

No, it's not. I doubt even the format itself has the potential to be better than H.264, but when it comes to implementations, libvpx (the only publicly available encoder) is definitely inferior to the best H.264 implementations, notably x264. Unless you can provide an encoder test that shows otherwise (a visual test, not SSIM graphs).

Well, you should try the latest VP9, It's not yet as good as x264 (which is far above other h264 encoders), but it certainly competitive against the latest x265. Considering it's patents-free advantage it's definitely a serious codec.

[bug77]

"Support for VP9/WebM video support for systems lacking MP4/H.264"

It's not really for the systems lacking -- VP9 is a codec superior to H264. Weather it can fend off HEVC that's another matter, but I think it's a bit unfair to just bill it as the poor man's video codec.

VP9 still doesn't have B-Frames (it has something similar, Idk if it works as well in practice) and is limited to YUV 4:2:0. It may be good enough for the naked eye (imho, even VP8 was good enough in that regard), but from a pure technical point of view, it's still lagging.

[wander]

Iceweasel has been in version 44 for several days ago.
https://packages.debian.org/experimental/iceweasel

This is a beta release of Iceweasel, and also from the experimental repository.

[wander]

So,Iceweasel = Firefox, only brandig and licence is different.

https://wiki.debian.org/Iceweasel

'Beyond that, they will be basically identical'

Why are you stating the obvious? The version you linked is still a beta and the phoronix article is about the Firefox 44 stable release:

iceweasel (44.0~b6-1) experimental; urgency=medium * New upstream beta release.

[Bucic]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1220502

Wow, look at them go. It's almost like watching the OpenOffice team...

[bug77]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1220502
Wow, look at them go. It's almost like watching the OpenOffice team...

What are you trying to say? It's a bug that has seen 57 comments in less than three months. And a couple of attempted patches. And it only happens with some accessibility stuff enabled.