Eyes Above The Waves

Robert O'Callahan. Christian. Repatriate Kiwi. Hacker.

Friday 3 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


Comments

Wladimir Palant
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 ;)
RichB
Sounds like your team created their own codec too.
Robin
Thanks guys! Here’s to a web where video is a first-class citizen :)
Jonathan Watt
Nice job guys! :-)
Paul Kim
Thank you guys. I've shared the news here: http://twitter.com/firefox/status/2453644659
Johnath
@Wladimir - Left to Right: Pearce, Double, Gregan
Funtomas
Thanks guys and congrats.
Ivan Garcia
Great!
insertrealname
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?
Justin Dolske
I should note that while I did the controls' implementation, Jennifer Boriss did the visual design. We're both in Mountain View. :-)
Tristan
My heroes!
Brian Birtles
Go team! :)
Matthew Holloway
Great stuff guys!
I always tell people that Firefox has a huge NZ contingent.
Tomas
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!
Tom
Nice work guys! I've been reading a lot about this recently and had no idea it had come from the office next door :)
Jonas Sicking
Yay! Great thanks for all your excellent work!!
albi
thanks for your excellent work!