64 bit Firefox & Flash

Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell at gmail.com
Tue Feb 24 02:52:33 UTC 2009


On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 7:53 PM, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler at chello.at> wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>> Do many users have a use for flash with no video/audio support, zero
>> possibility of video/audio support, and generally poor compatibility
>> otherwise?
>
> With the appropriate GStreamer plugins from RPM Fusion, several video and
> audio stuff actually works. Not all though.

Right, but while Fedora could ship gnash-by-default the codecs are
right out and without them is there really much reason to ship
gnash-by-default?

(or rather, is there enough benefit to offset potential browser
stability problems and potentially defeating website fallbacks (i.e.
today you might get a non-flash version of the page when no flash is
detected, but with gnash you can get a flash version that doesn't work
and no obvious way to get to the non-flash version)).

> I agree about the poor compatibility, I'm not all that happy with it. Still,
> it's the only Free Software Flash solution which works with Konqueror,
> which is why I picked the Fedora package up when it got orphaned. (There's
> swfdec, but that still doesn't have a Konqueror plugin and AFAIK their
> Mozilla plugin doesn't work in Konqueror, though I haven't tried it in
> 4.2.)
>
> But mostly I'd just recommend not to use Flash at all. I hate Flash ads. (At
> least with Gnash you can just right-click and "Quit Gnash" to get rid of
> them.) What's annoying is that Firefox keeps prompting for plugin
> installation every single time. Konqueror can be told to remember a "No"
> answer. If all you need Flash for is YouTube, there are downloaders who can
> download the videos so they can be played with a local media player such as
> Kaffeine or Totem (given appropriate xine-lib or GStreamer plugins from RPM
> Fusion).

Fortunately F11 will be shipping Firefox 3.1 with free media support.
So perhaps they'll be some progress there in the wider world.

Also, there are some sites like  http://tinyvid.tv/  which will
convert video from sites like youtube to free formats. (Sites like
that can play codec licensing fees so you don't have to. :) )




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