Saturday, 4 July 2009

Faces Of The Web Video Revolution

There's a lot of press these days about the HTML5 <video> tag and the struggle for universal unencumbered video and audio codecs --- much of it associated with the Firefox 3.5 launch. I wonder how many people know that the Firefox video implementation is almost entirely due to just a few people in the Mozilla office in Newmarket --- Chris Double, Matthew Gregan, Chris Pearce, and to a lesser extent, me. (Justin Dolske did the controls UI, but I'm not sure where he lives!) I'm proud that we managed to get considerably more done for the 3.5 release than I expected.

It's a great privilege to have the opportunity to really shake up the world for the better, with a very small team, in a relatively small amount of time, and do it right here in Auckland. I'm very thankful.


Chris Pearce, Chris Double and Matthew Gregan


17 comments:

  1. I know that you are not on this photo so I guess it's Chris Double, Matthew Gregan, Chris Pearce there. Did you list them from left to right? It would be interesting to associate some faces with these names ;)

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  2. Sounds like your team created their own codec too.

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  3. Thanks guys! Here’s to a web where video is a first-class citizen :)

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  4. Thank you guys. I've shared the news here: http://twitter.com/firefox/status/2453644659

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  5. @Wladimir - Left to Right: Pearce, Double, Gregan

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  6. Thanks guys and congrats.

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  7. insertrealname4 July 2009 at 16:51

    Just as a point of reference, what are the minimal tested hardware requirements for the built-in Firefox 3.5 codecs? I'm using a now obsolete AMD Turion 1.6GHz uni-processor which has at least SSE2 support, 1MB L2 cache, on a notebook with 2GB memory running Windows XP; my download internet connection is about 500KBytes/sec max. (modulo other factors). Yet the introductory video (the multilingual "Thank you for upgrading...", mozilla.com's "What's new in 3.5" page) still stutters with the CPU mostly pegged 100%. Is my hardware simply too wimpy?

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  8. I should note that while I did the controls' implementation, Jennifer Boriss did the visual design. We're both in Mountain View. :-)

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  9. Great stuff guys!
    I always tell people that Firefox has a huge NZ contingent.

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  10. Sory, but there is not good news!
    http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,62055739,00.htm?scid=rss_z_nw
    I want your answers!

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  11. Nice work guys! I've been reading a lot about this recently and had no idea it had come from the office next door :)

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  12. Yay! Great thanks for all your excellent work!!

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  13. thanks for your excellent work!

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