LWN: Comments on "Firefox 71"

Firefox 71

flussence — Wed, 11 Dec 2019 00:38:37 +0000

In the context of web development, there's no reason not to use Opus everywhere. Just polyfill it with JS for Apple Snobs, the same way we polyfilled WebP in Firefox until 2019 and Everything Else in IE.

(Has anyone compiled Firefox itself to WASM yet so we can use it like Chrome Frame? That'd be one way to drag iPhone users kicking and screaming into this decade...)

Firefox 71

pabs — Tue, 10 Dec 2019 05:38:57 +0000

There are much better choices for royalty-free audio codecs now, like Opus, which also has a common library too but I guess is supported by fewer platforms and audio tools.

Firefox 71

tterribe — Tue, 10 Dec 2019 02:00:16 +0000

Even though it still has plenty of technical limitations, MP3 is a royalty-free codec now, and should be preferred over encumbered, royalty-bearing alternatives.

One of the advantages of that is that it *can* be implemented once, using a common library, instead of relying on integration with system codecs on every platform, using platform-specific APIs, just because you needed the platform vendor to pay the royalties. It's a much cleaner situation.

Firefox 71

flussence — Wed, 04 Dec 2019 08:22:14 +0000

It still feels mildly unsettling seeing MP3 get added to software like this, even though I'm aware it's been legally defanged for years now…

Also relevant is the fact we've apparently been suffering bad fonts for a long time, according to this comment: https://redd.it/e5i714