The newest major update to FireFox is coming early next year in version 3.1.  One of the largest improvements is the enhanced support for open source video software, which has been a main focus for Mozilla recently.  More specifically, the newest version will likely include support for a new HTML tag designed specifically for embedding video into web pages, as well as support for royalty-free video codec Ogg Theora.

According to Yahoo News, FireFox developers met at a summit in British Columbia recently to discuss native Theora support, and to test builds of the browser that incorporate the latest enhancements in open-source video support.  The goal of the summit was to discuss ideas to help implement a common codec that works across all platforms that can be ready in time for the 3.1 release.

The company says users of the new browser, when it becomes available, won’t have to download any special plugins to play Theora content, and to spread the love to web designers, it allows for the simple use of a “<video>” tag to mark content.  This eliminates the use of javascript to launch a video like the “old days,” which designers will definitely find as a welcomed improvement.

These improvements in the area of video support for browsing is all part of an effort by Mozilla to change the game to a world of cross-platform open-source video codec technologies instead of a variety of different video playback software from the likes of Apple, Real, Windows Media, and a slew of others.  Much like it did to the world of internet-browsers, Mozilla is all about the spreading of open-source software to replace “old-school” proprietary methods.

“It’s such an obvious improvement over the previous state of affairs of dealing with online video that it really makes you wonder why it took so long,” wrote Ben McIlwain, an IT consultant, on his blog. “We’re several years into the online video revolution now (led by such giants as YouTube), so it’s only fair that we finally get native browser support for videos.”

Ogg Theora isn’t even supported by Internet Explorer 7, so once again, open-source has a leg up on the proprietary giant.

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Entry was posted on Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 at 10:58 pm under Internet, Open source.

Read more entries by Justin Montgomery.
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