[Foundation-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] File format policy

[Brion Vibber]

Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> A huge amount of streaming video on the Web requires codec downloads,
> but Windows Media player will autodownload most of them, although it
> will not autodownload theora this is why the en vogue video glurge
> sites use flash based players.
> 
> If you want mostly painless universial support for Windows users, what
> you should be arguing for is a java Wikipedia player (which is
> certantly possible).

Fluendo's got a GPL'd Java applet player that can play streaming Ogg Vorbis and
Theora. I've tossed up a quick test page using a random short video clip I
grabbed off of Commons:

http://test.leuksman.com/video/

Seems to work for me in:
* Mac OS X 10.4: Safari 2
* Mac OS X 10.4: Firefox 1.5
* Windows XP SP2: IE 7
* Windows XP SP2: Firefox 1.5

I haven't tested other systems extensively but would like to see some
compatibility feedback.

NullC reports it works with gcjwebplugin on Linux/Firefox, though perhaps slowly.

Unfortunately the market penetration of Java on Windows and Linux isn't what it
was at the peak of the browser wars; Microsoft no longer seems to bundle Java
and many Linux distributions still aren't shipping a Java plugin. So it may
require some people to separately download and install Java.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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