Submitted by Microsoft has released a Windows Media Player plugin for Firefox. The plugin obviously only works on Windows. “We couldn’t respond as quickly as we would have liked to (we had to get Windows Vista out the door!), but now that it’s shipped, the team has moved its attention to getting Firefox users up and running. This week we are happy to say that we have a new plug-in for Firefox that makes WMP work once again.”
Or alternatively you could use VLC….
ditto that, VLC is awesome, it supports many platform and formats. it can even stream Tivo TY format (using a plugin)
and in my case it even screwed up the WMP settings! Yes I’ve tried VLC before and went back to WMP. The problem was once I tried to watch videos with WMP it was just a blank screen with audio, no video. Uninstall VLC and the video playback worked in WMP.
That has nothing to do with VLC because VLC doesn’t touch anything from WMP.
WinAmp may screw up WMP and WMP may screw up WinAmp, but VLC makes no difference on the system since it doesn’t use or touch anything the WMP needs.
Well apart from the filetype registration, obviously. But that’s not a problem.
Yes it does have something to do with VLC. WMP worked fine before installing VLC. After installing VLC I was no longer able to watch videos using WMP. I uninstall VLC and I was able to watch video again. I do not have winamp installed and have not installed it in a couple of years.
VLC probably installed codecs that conflicted somehow.
Maybe it is different in Windows than under BeOS. But VLC for BeOS has all it’s plug-ins(codecs) in a local directory to the VLC software – they should only be visible to VLC.
Same for VLC on all platforms. VLC on Windows doesn’t touch the rest of the system.
VLC doesn’t install codecs.
No, that does not sound like VLC is the problem, more like WMP. Like the person said who replied to you before all VLC should is register that it is the preferred player for certain media files.
If WMP gives you a blank screen on a video media file just because it is no longer the preferred player then there is a bug (feature?) in WMP.
Yep, use it on my BeOS machines too. Works fine and there is no danger of DRM patches being added to my OS, or hidden streams back to Microsoft reporting on my system’s configuration.
they are digging their own grave. The name of the game now is cross-platform portability; That’s why web 2.0 is on the rise. If they can’t make their technology platform independent; they’re screwed. The smart guys like adobe, who make their products multi-platform, will prevail at the end
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We’re talking about a Windows application now supporting embedding in FF, not a media standard (like Adobe with Flash / PDFs).
the FF plugin works only on windows firefox not any other versions of firefox.
Well, Windows Media Player isn’t available on Linux. Microsoft would have to port that first to make the plugin work.
Your missing the point Laurence. PDF _IS_ a ubiquitous format. Microsoft _WISH_ wmv/wma were ubiquitous formats.
Yes there is WMP as a player versus Acrobat as a player. That’s not the point being made.
Microsoft probably wish they could still get away with shipping WMP with nothing but wma, wmv, avi & wav. They can’t. They shot themselves in the foot by stifling innovation around their work. That’s the point.
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That was never mine nor this topic’s point though. This topic is about Microsofts application ‘Windows Media Player’ only just supporting being embedded into FF (ie an application issue).
It was never about the WMV/WMA files and (as you were correct in stating) how MS wish they were ubiquitous.
Well I’m not so sure about Adobe. They refuse to make *CS2 work with Vista (they want you to buy *CS3). When Apple switched to x86, it caused lot of drama. Acrobat Reader on Linux is crap and you can only get the “reader” thing not the professional edition (no editing, sorry). Oh, and Adobe Flash Player for Linux will always be behind the Windows and the Mac versions.
“Acrobat Reader on Linux is crap and you can only get the “reader” thing not the professional edition (no editing, sorry).”
You’re right, the original Adobe tools. On Linux or BSD, there are alternatives available that are useful up to a certain degree (gv, xpdf). For creation, OpenOffice and pdflatex are fine, but they do not edit PDF files, of course.
“Oh, and Adobe Flash Player for Linux will always be behind the Windows and the Mac versions.”
This would change if the format would be standardized and published, encouraging open source developers to create “Flash” software (gstreamer-plugin-swfdec, p5-SWF-Builder, p5-SWF-File, sswf, svg2swf, swfdec, swfmill, swftools, vnc2swf, swfdec-plugin, flashplayer etc.) that can compete with the ones from Adobe. But I think they’re not interested in this.
BTW, “Flash” makes the web less accessible and is more and more abused by skriptkiddies as a replacement for HTML. 🙂
It’s also becoming the preferred way for embedding video on a website, due to Flash being available to a higher percentage of online users than even Internet Explorer.
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That could possibly change with Silverlight and MSs agresive tactics promoting it / pushing it on to systems
Certainly possible, but I don’t personally think that will happen any time soon. We use some online flash video at work (works great in combination with Coppermine) and our main reasons for choosing it were threefold: the video will work on the vast majority of computers, all three major platforms can be supported with a single format/file, and (IMO most importantly) it depends on a piece of software that the vast majority of computer users already have installed.
Right now, using Silverlight wouldn’t give us any of those advantages.
For web, I think the last one is most important. Years back, I saw a very interesting graph that plotted the amount of time a website takes to load vs. how long most users will wait – at 10 seconds, 25 percent of users had gone elsewhere, and it went up from there. I would be very surprised if there isn’t a similar relationship between the amount of effort it takes to view a web-embedded video & the percentage of users who will persist.
“It’s also becoming the preferred way for embedding video on a website, due to Flash being available to a higher percentage of online users than even Internet Explorer.”
Sadly, this is true. There are free alternatives available for streaming video, but they did not spread very wide, allthough they might be the better solution.
If used correctly, “Flash” won’t be that bad. And it would be even better if it was free. But the best technology, if used inaccurately, can lead to a loss of usability and accessibility. I hope this will change if “Flash” matures a bit. MICROS~1’s own “invention” could drive Macromedia to free “Flash”.
I have absolutely *nothing* bad to say about this product, since it works like supposed to (at least in every case of use, I’ve encountered) even with Firefox, unlike the Mac OS X plugin, that only targets Safari…
Concerning Flash Player for Linux, I’ve had no experiences that indicate to me that the Flash Player 9 (all though still beta) is that much behind the Mac version, e.g.
On the contrary, I find the Mac versions slow and buggy and at least as ‘beta-esque’ as the Linux version.
That is of course not the best of signs…
But concerning the authoring capabilities of Adobe Acrobat Professional, I just don’t see the reason for Adobe to ‘Go Linux’ with this product, since the user base would be very limited.
Flash Player 9 for Linux is already finalized.
It seems I stand corrected, however, googling for it:
http://www.google.dk/search?q=flash+player+9+linux&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-…
turned up links to AdobeLabs which is their beta stuff….
Now, instead, googling for:
http://www.google.dk/search?q=flash+player+9+download&ie=utf-8&oe=u…
turns up links to the finished version…
I do apologize humbly for my mistake…
Oh, and Adobe Flash Player for Linux will always be behind the Windows and the Mac versions.
As far as I know, this is currently not true for Flash.
Other than that I agree with you, it would be nice if Adobe ported their software to Linux. What I miss most is DreamWeaver and Illustrator, as there really are no good Linux replacements for them as there are for e.g. Acrobat Reader.
The closest you get to DreamWeaver would be Netbeans+Visualweb pack, but that only works well for JSF development and due to the higher prices for java web hosting most web sites use other techniques to create dynamic web pages.
You know, with all of the money and resources Microsoft has, they could have easily released a new Firefox WMP plug-in as quickly as they would have “liked” to and for Fx on other platforms–but politics and stinginess within the company kept its developers from doing so.
Monetarily, MS really has no motivation to release a free plug-in for another OS as they gain nothing from it, especially when you consider how ubiquitous Windows is. If anything, keeping it Windows-only only reinforces that ubiquity. People won’t switch to another OS if they can’t access content. And that = more $$$ for Microsoft.
That came out more anti-MS than I intended for it to. I’m not singling them out as “bad” or “evil” for that, just stating the facts–you’d have to be pretty naïve to believe that such things only happen within Microsoft.
That aside, it’s good to see ’em acknowledging Firefox, even if only Firefox on Windows.
You know, with all of the money and resources Microsoft has, they could have easily released…
…cross platform versions of all of its popular software, like e.g. WMP, Messenger and IE, that worked equally well on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and thereby probably make their own life a bit easier, at least here in the EU!
But we all know that’s never gonna happen… The lack of cross platform availability and the massively dominant position of Windows on the desktop makes this impossible from an MS viewpoint, since the lack of functions and support is supposed to turn even more people into Windows-only users!
So you’re absolutely correct!
Please, and Adobe is so much better than Microsoft?
This is the same company, when Microsoft offered up the idea of PDF support ‘out of the box’ for Office 2007, Adobe kicked up a stink – and when XPS gains a bigger hold in the edocument market, you’ll see Adobe piss and moan over the fact that XPS is with Office by default but no PDF. Given the pea brain memories many have here, they’ll see Adobe as the victim rather than the reality that it was Adobe that set of the chain of events.
The fact of the matter, Adobe need Microsoft, its their personal whipping boy when all else fails; as for ‘cross platformness’ please, the day I see Adobe either work directly and publicly with Wine or provide a native version of their Creative Suite (not just Photoshop, but the WHOLE suite) then I will be convince about what you say.
It’s cool that Microsoft considers Firefox enough to make a plugin for it.
Firefox is the best damn browser now and I’m sure they use it at Redmond
IE7 is ok but it’s lacking all the extensions adopted by Firefox users.
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That’s subject to opinion – personally I prefer Opera.
However, this topic isn’t about browser wars 🙂
well, because i have bipolar disorder and can get a little moody, i use both firefox and opera. sometimes i just can’t make an absolute decision.
It’s interesting we have more evidence that they recognize that FireFox isn’t a fad. As another example, I know that at work I’ve seen SharePoint slides shown by Microsoft Reps that say they will support FireFox.
But, in reality, I doubt I will bother installing it. I avoid Microsoft standards whenever possible. And, it’s easy for me to watch a Flash version or some other format. In fact, I don’t really remember seeing Windows Media Player required (or even available) at the sites that I visit.
[Edit] Ooops. Sorry about the embarassing typo in the Subject [/Edit]
Edited 2007-04-17 17:33
a combination of these two tools instead:
Full Step-By-Step Guide: Embedded Windows Media in Firefox:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=206213
(I don’t install the activex plugin I just make sure the media player DLLs are where they need to be…)
Windows Media Lite:
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Windows_Media_Lite.htm
(which restores what little of WMP I need to do certain web videos…)
I tend to do it this way because I rip out WMP from the source when I build my installs with nLite. The overall system seems a bit faster as well, come to think of it…
–bornagainpenguin
I’m a little confused… Is this plugin meant for Vista users only, or also for XP? A friend using Vista has said some Windows Media videos don’t work for him in Firefox, but on my XP machine, videos usually work already. So is this plugin something I should install for myself? What does it fix?
I have WMP 10, incidentally. Perhaps the plugin fixes something WMP 11 breaks? ISTR hearing that videos get stretched improperly in Firefox with WMP 11…
Yeah! WMV & WMA embed fine in my firefox!
I use MPlayer and plugger (^-^)
Basically, its a plugin for XP (32 and 64bit) as well as Vista (again, 32 and 64bit). If you install FireFox after you install WMP on XP, you may have no support for WMV. With Vista this is more often the case as with XP you can download WMP11.
There is a work around mentioned above where you copy the DLLs from the WMP directory to the FireFox plugin directory but this installer is, obviously, simpler.
Hope that helps.
I like this idea that Microsoft is building a plugin for a competing browser unfortunately I probably will not install it. I like having the media play outside of the browser rather than in it otherwise I waste time reading an article, click the link, let it load, watch, then go back one page, read, click link, repeat. At least if I have the media playing in a separate player I can let it load in the background and continue reading. And firefox isn’t exactly the best when it comes to clicking on the back button and putting the page at where it was before clicking the link. Several times I had to scroll down to find where I left off.
This can only be a good thing in terms of helping to spread Firefox even further and, for once I believe Microsoft have acted sensibly. It does make a refreshing change!
It is simply a change of focus by Microsoft.
As MS clearly cannot dictate the basic XHTML format anymore to remain on a IE-only policy is no longer advantagous.
Further, MS sees the multimedia format for the internet become Flash. This distresses them much much more than loosing another 5% Market share to Firefox. They want to be able to dictate the internet multimedia formats, they want to lock in as many people as possible. Locking them into IE clearly did not work, so now they try to tie people to the Windows platform. IE always has been a vehicle to tie people to the Windows platform, because ONLY there they can keep selling people the Office suite which is THE main reason why businesses don’t switch over to Apple or Linux in droves.
IE never was the cash cow, that always has been Windows and Office. MS is simply using differently coloured shackles to tie people to the Microsoft ecosystem.
Website creators no longer can ignore Firefox on Windows, but for sure they can ignore $AnyBrowser on Linux and Apple.
As I see it, Firefox has forced MS to better adhere to agreed-on standards of the W3C, but for Multimedia there is no standard yet, so MS can play their same old dirty game in that area again.
For getting a warm “thank you” and “welcome” from the open source and open standards communities, MS would have had to call for a standardisation effort which is based on existing open video and audio formats. To get their own WMF formats into that standard they would have to completely open it.
By the way, NO programmer in the community would ask Microsoft to open source their implementation of that standard!
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If webdevelopers coded their sites correctly to start with, then the sites should be platform independant by default (asuming the webbrowsers adhear to the w3c standards)