[theora] Seamless web video within reach

[Denver Gingerich]

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 7:46 PM, Silvia
Pfeiffer<silviapfeiffer1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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).

Is the signature from a Certificate Authority that IE trusts?  If not,
then the UX will probably be much worse than if it is signed with a
Freemail cert (which is one that IE trusts).  This all depends on what
the UX would be in each case; if anyone knows, I'd like to find out.

Denver
http://ossguy.com/