Microsoft, as part of its open source initiative (and maybe a soft spot for Firefox users), has released a Media Player plug-in for Firefox 2.0 that allows users to play Windows Media content within its competing browser.

Until today, media on Firefox was limited to the standard MPG, AVI, FLV, and MPG filetypes; playing Microsoft’s media formats such as WMAs and WMVs was ‘iffy’ at best. This new plug-in remedies the many problems with the previous one and is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows XP SP2 as well as Windows Vista.

The plug-in was developed by Port 25, an open source lab that was launched by Microsoft in 2006, and is claimed to be backwards compatible with Windows Media Player (WMP); however, some have suggested that WMP version 11 is required.

Support for Windows OCX scripting interfaces(object linking and embedding) has been added to allow developers to add the Media Player’s functions to future applications.

Hank Janssen, a Port 25 developer, notes: “It shows another level of interoperability and eagerness in working with the Community to get this released,” as the team plans for future Firefox plug-ins. “And we are currently looking to writing a plug-in to make cardspace work inside of Firefox.”

And we thought nothing good would come from the Microsoft and Mozilla meeting last year. 

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 at 12:46 pm under Uncategorized.

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