Firefox is showing his teeth by Ben Fredericson
Firefox’s progress has been quite steady since its’ first releases. I remember downloading one of the first alpha version to try it out. It was rough but it was on a good track.
Today, Firefox has a lot of competition for the top spot. Opera, Google Chrome, Safari and even the upcoming Internet Explorer 9 are coming to bite back. However, I believe the biggest challenge Firefox will have to overcome is H.264.
H.264 is a highly popular video codec. It was created in collaboration with the MPEG group. It fits into the long saga of video on the web and HTML5 which itself fits into another long story about the evolution of the HTML standards and the evolution of the web.
To put it in context, a group of people interested in the evolution of the web decided to propose a new version of HTML, the base language on which web pages are built on. They called it HTML5. One of the goals of this group was to introduce standard facilities for video on the web. An open way to put video on the web without having to rely on external proprietary plugins like Flash. After specifying an HTML tag to fulfil this goal, they discussed which video codec would be needed to play those videos. After a long and much passionate discussion, the group came to the conclusion that it would be better not to make any video codec mandatory for any browser. Just like there is no mandatory image format that a browser must support in the web standards, there would be no one for video too.
Left in the hands of those who build browsers, two groups quickly emerged in the political video codec movement: those in support for an open, free and without licensing fees video codec and those in support for an already well established but proprietary with licensing fees video codec. Firefox and Opera sided with the open group while Safari and recently Internet Explorer sided with the proprietary group. Ogg Theora is currently the open group video codec and H.264 is the proprietary video codec. Google Chrome did not choose a group and implemented both video codecs.
There are many difficulties that Firefox will go through if it does not implement H.264. The proprietary video codec is rapidly gaining traction, momentum and popularity. Many high profile video web sites are currently using it with their Flash video player. It is simply natural for them to keep using it with HTML5. Many video experts say that it is superior to the Ogg Theora alternative. There is already a widespread of hardware decoding components for H.264 making your iPhone battery last way longer when viewing H.264 videos.
Even with these difficulties, I believe it would be a bad move for Firefox to introduce H.264. It would be a dent in the open web standards by establishing a proprietary component as a norm on the web. It would be a first step towards a less open web space with all the consequences that could follow.
If Firefox does not implement H.264, that might not stop others to put H.264 in Firefox. Recently, Canonical, the Ubuntu parent’s company, has been offering OEM the option to license H.264 with their new computers that come with Ubuntu pre-installed. This could theoretically means that an OEM could sell you Ubuntu with a modified version of Firefox with H.264 in it while being 100% legal. A few days ago, a new project called Wild Fox was created with the intention of offering a modified version of Firefox that includes H.264 for all those countries where the H.264 patents are not enforceable which exclude USA and South Korea.
A wild card in this video codec battle is VP8. It is a video codec that Google obtains by acquiring the On2 Technologies company. Google is suppose to announce the open-sourcing of the VP8 codec at their Google I/O conference either tomorrow or thursday. VP8 should be superior to Ogg Theora. It would counter the weakness argument given by those who choose H.264 over Ogg Theora for its’ image quality and performance.
Let’s hope Firefox can go through these H.264 related problems and prosper like it did in the recent years.
Updates: Google confirmed today the open sourcing of VP8 along with another project called WebM to create a video container for the web. This is some great news. Mozilla and Opera joined the WebM project and are already working on it.
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