Firefox 51 To Support FLAC Audio Codec

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Firefox 51 To Support FLAC Audio Codec

Beginning with the Firefox 51 web-browser release, FLAC audio will finally be supported natively...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=FLAC-For-Firefox

[r1348]

Can anyone point out to an online service that uses FLAC?

[Danny3]

Wow, this is great, but why so late?
I don't understand why open source browsers like Firefox and Chromium didn't add support for free codecs like FLAC from version 1
I, as a web developer, I will always prefer open codecs.

[Creak]

I don't understand Mozilla... it makes 6 years that all the developers are asking them to add WebP support, which is way better than any JPEG optimizations they're bringing up (WebP can compress alpha, JPEG can't, that's just it: JPEG can't compete that), it is open source and supported by Chrome since a few years now (so around 45% of the market shares), and it's still not in Firefox.

Yet, they managed to find time to add support for FLAC, an audio format that is great, but not extremely popular and, most of all, not supported by any other browser!

I would be glad to read this news if Mozilla was already on par with the other browsers, but it isn't so it's a bit sad to read that, it's like they don't know where to go.

[Creak]

Can anyone point out to an online service that uses FLAC?

Sonerezh propose to re-encode FLAC files on the fly, but with this it could stream the files directly.
Also a few online music shops propose to download in FLAC.

[Adarion]

OMFG. Why?
I do not understand. Not even sure I still want to understand them.
FLAC itself maybe nice, but Firefox doesn't need to be a jack of all trades. It's still a browser, not a multimedia player. (back in the days: Mozilla suite is so bloated and obese, let's take out the browser part, ditch everything else, and keep with the browser alone and let's call that Firefox.)
Especially FLAC is not that common, especially not on the web for streaming.

But the FF people love to include all sorts of non-sense instead of speeding up things and fixing bugs. Oh, and let's ditch version numbers, nobody needs them.
I think the only reasonable major thing they added in the last 3 years was probably electrolysis and that's not even ready for generic use.

[PieterDeBruijn]

Opus audio codec would be much more appreciated. FLAC is ancient and not web-targeted. Good to have support, but would rather see Opus.

[Gusar]

Opus audio codec would be much more appreciated. FLAC is ancient and not web-targeted. Good to have support, but would rather see Opus.

Opus support is already there. Has been for a long time now.

[bug77]

Wow, this is great, but why so late?
I don't understand why open source browsers like Firefox and Chromium didn't add support for free codecs like FLAC from version 1
I, as a web developer, I will always prefer open codecs.

Because basically nobody cares about FLAC? Nobody sells uncompressed music and kids these days use all sorts of crappy headphones/speakers that even a 128kbit MP3 is wasted on them.
I've ripped my CDs to FLAC, but mostly because I've wanted to have a bit-perfect backup.

[c117152]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebP#Restrictions

I don't understand Mozilla... it makes 6 years that all the developers are asking them to add WebP support, which is way better than any JPEG optimizations they're bringing up (WebP can compress alpha, JPEG can't, that's just it: JPEG can't compete that), it is open source and supported by Chrome since a few years now (so around 45% of the market shares), and it's still not in Firefox.

Yet, they managed to find time to add support for FLAC, an audio format that is great, but not extremely popular and, most of all, not supported by any other browser!

I would be glad to read this news if Mozilla was already on par with the other browsers, but it isn't so it's a bit sad to read that, it's like they don't know where to go.

WebP 8bit yuv has visibly bad gradients: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebP#Restrictions & https://cineform.zendesk.com/hc/en-u...-bit-precision

Hardly a minor limitation all things considered.