Firefox 51 To Support FLAC Audio Codec

[Creak]

Personally I'll take FLAC support first over WebP support. Connectivity is so fast and so cheap most places now, saving a few kilobytes in image compression in loading a web page doesn't make a measurable difference. Seems like WebP might be of interest to the extremely high volume web sites, the biggest of the big, but I don't really see what tangible benefit it brings to consumers. Obviously if major sites start using WebP, we'll need the support in FF to browse them, but until then, it doesn't seem like a priority to me anyways.

I hear your point, I think though that there are more images than sounds loaded every day, quite all the websites uses images (even tiny ones) while only specific ones using audio. And let's be clear about that, Spotify and the likes will never propose FLAC, rights owners will never accept that. So that lets us with a handful of websites that could use FLAC on one side, and pretty much all the websites using images one the other side. So improving the responsiveness by supporting a new image format seems more profitable for the everyday users than supporting FLAC. As for use cases, it's obviously a chicken and egg problem, but as Firefox loses market shares, websites are starting to treat it as a second class browser and supports WebP for the browsers that support it and fallback on JPEG for the others. That's the case of Google websites (Gmail, Google Photos, ...) and also Facebook.

For more examples, you can browse through the three bugs opened during the last 6 years (the last one is the new current one, apparently WebP is actually coming):

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=600919

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=856375

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1294490

When Chrome gets APNG support then Firefox will get WebP support.

So this is the underlying war?

[cl333r]

Opus is the best solution for lossy audio, FLAC is the best one for lossless.
These are 2 different markets.

[Daktyl198]

I love how nobody thought of local connections... Plex anybody? This would certainly help in cases like that.

Side-note: Why doesn't Firefox (and/or other browsers) just utilize ffmpeg for all free codec support? It always seems like such a big deal to add in support for a codec when ffmpeg has all they need. See a mimetype of any free codec? Pipe it to ffmpeg! This would also remove the Chrome APNG and Firefox WebP debate.

[PyroDevil]

I'm surprised that the browsers explicitly need to enable support for formats. Isn't the goal of frameworks like GStreamer/Phonon to handle the file formats?

My guess is they try to minimize the attack surface.

[alexcortes]

IIRC, Qobuz and Tidal do stream using flac.

http://www.qobuz.com

http://tidal.com

[ElectricPrism]

These days Firefox has joined IE

[Luke]

it's obviously a chicken and egg problem, but as Firefox loses market shares, websites are starting to treat it as a second class browser and supports WebP for the browsers that support it and fallback on JPEG for the others. That's the case of Google websites (Gmail, Google Photos, ...) and also Facebook.

There will always be those of us who will never use a closed browser, nor any browser that exposes us to the tracking and fingerprinting servers that have infested the web like a swarm of poisonous spiders. Lots of overlap though with those of us who also stay off of Google, Facebook, and any site that won't run without enabling JS from an unfamiliar 3ed party site. Someone sitting down at one of my boxes would probably notice first that both Google and Facebook are actually blocked. That is due to all those links and sharing buttons.

Any website that decided not to open in Firefox nor in Torbrowser I will simply treat as broken and walk away from, just as I normally close tabs that open emtpy due to browsing to some random site that turns out to use JS to load their text(and thus is blocked by NoScript. Those of us who use FF extensions to block attack sites and trackers will simply accept that some toplevel sites also have to be blocked.

I would advise that any website that reduces functionality in FF or blocks it outright be presumed a site that tracks and sells your personal information and avoided outright or exiled to a dedicated device used for nothing else. Kind of hard for facebook to get someone's comprehensive web history if they only use it on a rooted $25 Chinese android phone with an adblocking hosts file, Google Play removed, no Google account, not activated, and never used to check email or any other website.

[smitty3268]

I love how nobody thought of local connections... Plex anybody? This would certainly help in cases like that.

Side-note: Why doesn't Firefox (and/or other browsers) just utilize ffmpeg for all free codec support? It always seems like such a big deal to add in support for a codec when ffmpeg has all they need. See a mimetype of any free codec? Pipe it to ffmpeg! This would also remove the Chrome APNG and Firefox WebP debate.

Security.

[mmstick]

Yes, but aren't you likely to save those files to your disc and listen with Amarok or Rhythembox? I don't see FLAC streaming taking off.

Also, how many people could actually tell the difference between 320kbp/s mp3 and loseless?

Why bother with 320 Kbps MP3s when 96 Kbps Opus's are indistinguishable from FLAC? MP3 is 20 years too old.

[bug77]

FLAC is widely used amongst hi-fi enthusiasts.

That's an oxymoron right there.
How can something be "widely used" within 1% of the total market? Same argument I hear when people on Phoronix decry lack of support for feature X on Linux, totally forgetting Linux on the desktop is at (or around) 1% as well.