Firefox 30 Beta Finally Supports GStreamer 1.0

Written by Michael Larabel in Mozilla on 30 April 2014 at 11:06 AM EDT. 10 Comments
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Following the Firefox 29.0 release, Firefox 30.0 is now in Mozilla's beta channel. One of the changes for Linux users with this next major web-browser update is finally support for the GStreamer 1.0 API.

GStreamer 1.0 has been out since September of 2012 and with many changes. The upstream GStreamer 1.x development meanwhile is up to GStreamer 1.4 and now only with Firefox 30 is the new API being supported. Up to now, Firefox has still been relying upon GStreamer 0.10.

GStreamer 1.0 support for Firefox has had an open tracking bug going back to October of 2012. There were work-in-progress patches for porting to the new multimedia API throughout 2013, but only with this next Firefox release will Linux users be able to use the latest GStreamer. The only downside of the Firefox code in its current state is it appears the GStreamer 0.10 code-paths are the default but at build-time it needs to be configured with --enable-gstreamer=1.0. Sadly it appears there's no dynamic detection support and Mozilla developers are being conservative with Debian stable not having GStreamer 1.x packaged.

Firefox 30 also has a new Box Model Highlighter, new CSS property support, ECMAScript 6.0 support improvements, and many other changes. While Firefox 30 is now in a beta state, it will be officially released in June. Details on the developer changes for Mozilla Firefox 30 can be found via the Mozilla Developer Network.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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