Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis support for the HTML5 <video> element has landed in Firefox Minefield nightlies (3.1a2-pre). This is big news because it means a standard way of displaying video in web browsers will be available to all without being stuck with Flash. And Theora is the only accepted format on Wikimedia Commons. Posts: Greg Maxwell, Christopher Blizzard, Chris Double, Gervase Markham.
What we need is people to test this. So please download a copy of Minefield, test it thoroughly on Wikimedia Commons video, beat on it, thrash it, report bugs. There’s plenty. You need to load the video, click “More …” and it’ll give you the option. Wikimedia would very much like to make it a first option rather than a last one, but first it needs to be better (more functional and stable) than loading Cortado with Java.
Apple and Nokia tried some truly disgusting FUD around the topic and successfully got the words “Vorbis” and “Theora” taken out of the HTML5 spec, but Firefox adoption means 20% of Web users in short order. So we can leave them to play catchup per business needs. “You got a Nokia? No wonder you can’t watch that Wikipedia video, Nokias suck.”
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