Firefox 4 gets WebM support
Posted by Percy Cabello on June 8th, 2010 • Tags: , ,
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Firefox 4 nightly builds just got support for WebM, the recently announced open video format, based on Google’s VP8 codec.

Previously, WebM support was only available in experimental Firefox builds that debuted the day WebM was announced, a few weeks ago.

Recently, Google announced a change to the WebM license to address some concerns about losing all rights to the WebM codec code, instead of just the patent license in case Google got sued for violating some submarine patent.

It should become generally available with the first Firefox 4 beta targeted for late June.

More details on the landing in Chris Pearce’ blog.

Comments
antistress said on June 9, 2010, 3:32 am:

Too bad. I still hope it will be backported to the 3.6 branch

Ken Saunders said on June 9, 2010, 3:18 pm:

Even though I do use nightly and beta versions, I use the current product release for my default/primary browser so I agree with antistress’s “Too bad” comment.

I thought that Mozilla was going to start pushing through new features in updates.
Besides, it would help to make up for Theora being a flop.

mpopp said on June 9, 2010, 9:30 pm:

Look at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/DeliveryMeetings/2010-06-09 – “Firefox 3.5.11 / Firefox 3.6.6″. Here it says “WebM discussion will likely happen shortly”.

The only interpretation that makes sense to me is that it refers to the discussion whether WebM will be backported to 3.6. And I think there are good reasons in favor of backporting, so I’m optimistic to see it happen.