Firefox Enables WebRTC, H.264 And MP3 Support By Default In Its Nightly Release Channel

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WebRTC , the plugin-free real-time video, audio and text chat protocol most browser vendors now support, is now activated by default in the latest bleeding edge Firefox Nightly release . While Mozilla has long backed WebRTC, it was only available as an option in the Nightly releases so far. Now that it is enabled by default, chances are that it will slowly make its way into the stable release channel over the next few months. As Mozilla’s Paul Rouget and Rober Nyman wrote in today’s announcement, “this is a huge step forward, to be able to run WebRTC directly in a web browser without it needing any special settings or configuration.” Chances are we will hear quite a bit about WebRTC throughout the year, especially now that the browser implementations are starting to roll out. Chrome already supported WebRTC in its stable releases since version 23 , for example, and Mozilla and Google recently demonstrated how their browsers’ users will be able to use WebRTC to talk to each other . Also newly enabled by default in the Firefox Nightly channel is support for the H.264 and MP3 formats . The decoding for these formats is done by the operating system and for now, these features are only available on Windows 7 and above. Support for Mac and Linux is in the works. Read more »

Why Mozilla Matters And Won’t Switch To WebKit

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Earlier this week, Opera announced that it would stop working on its own Presto layout engine and switch to WebKit. It’s obvious that the open source WebKit engine currently has a lot of momentum behind it, with Google, Apple and now Opera backing it. As Mozilla’s CTO Brendan Eich wrote last night, however, don’t expect Mozilla to switch engines anytime soon. Mozilla, thanks to its not-for-profit status (something most people are probably not even aware of), has a mission that’s very different from the other vendors. If Mozilla were a more traditional business, though, Eich admits that “Mozilla would probably have to do what Opera has done. But we’re not just a business, and our desktop share seems to be holding or possibly rising — due in part to the short-term wins we have been able to build on Gecko.” If WebKit’s momentum continues, our browsers will soon be little more than the Chrome around WebKit. This kind of monoculture can’t be good for the Web and is a reason to cheer on Firefox and even Internet Explorer, no matter how you feel about it Read more »