[theora] Seamless web video within reach

[Silvia Pfeiffer]

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 4:51 AM, Denver Gingerich<denver at ossguy.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 2:26 PM, Christopher
> Blizzard<blizzard at mozilla.com> wrote:
>> I would much rather see us implement a plugin for IE that implements the
>> <video> tag with Theora support.  We did something like this for
>> <canvas> and it worked pretty well.  i.e.:
>>
>> http://arstechnica.com/software/news/2008/08/mozilla-drags-ie-into-the-future-with-canvas-element-plugin.ars
>
> That seems like quite a reasonable solution.  However, the above link
> suggests the <canvas> control user experience was a bit of a
> nightmare:
>
> "Currently, the experience is pretty crappy: you have to click through
> an infobar to allow installation of this component, then you have to
> click 'Yes' to say that you really want to run the native content, and
> then you have to click 'Yes' again to allow the component to interact
> with content on the page."
>
> Do you know if this has been fixed (ie. with code signing)?  I think
> that would be a necessary prerequisite before investing time in any
> ActiveX control (VLC or otherwise).  Similar issues are described by
> the VLC people here:
>
> http://wiki.videolan.org/ActiveX#Introduction
>
> I think this can be solved with the Freemail CA that I described
> earlier [1], which can be found by searching for "Freemail" on this
> page:
>
> http://www.dallaway.com/acad/webstart/
>
> Testing/developing on Windows is very inconvenient for me so I haven't
> tried it out.  Assuming this sort of signing is required for ideal UX,
> can someone give it a shot and tell us how it goes?

The oggcodecs (i.e. Xiph DS filters) are already signed. An ActiveX
control developed on top of them that also provides the <video>
element functionality to the browser can be signed in the same way (if
the current certificate doesn't already cover it).

Cheers,
Silvia.