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I started tinkering around with HTML5 recently and am very interested in Audio tag. Though one thing immediately came to my attention, it appears that OGG is the only format supported in Firefox!

I understand that this is because MP3 and other codecs are proprietary software and require a license to use. But how is HTML5 Audio (and Video) going to catch on if you can only use OGG?? Like it or not the world is currently hooked to MP3 or Apple's AAC.

And to further hinder things it seems that Mozilla is all for only natively supporting OGG.

So I'm curious. Why can't Firefox, and other browsers, use System installed codecs for playing media? Why do they have to be installed into the browser, or depend on technologies like Flash? It just seems like bad design to me.

Perhaps, I'm just naive about this, but this whole codec war is just a nuisance. Can anyone point me to information, laws, and other information regarding why browsers can't use system installed codecs? I would also like to hear other users opinions about this as well. Thanks!

Edit In case this comes off as not being a programming question, I want to clarify that to me this issue directly affects web programmers. For example, in the case of audio support, do we have to use flash? or will these issues eventually be handled in HTML5. Where does it seem that things are going, technology-wise, in regards to this issue?

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not a programming question –  fazo Sep 23 '10 at 16:03
Firefox also supports WAV. –  Ian Devlin Sep 23 '10 at 16:38
@fazo How is it not a programming question? or how can it be worded in to one. I don't mind editing. I'm basically wondering about where the future of coding on the browsers is going, in this case regarding HTML5's Audio tag vs Flash –  Kenny Cason Sep 23 '10 at 16:42
@ian thanks, i'll also keep that in mind –  Kenny Cason Sep 23 '10 at 16:42

1 Answer 1

up vote 1 down vote accepted

The <object> or <embed> tag could be used to reference any media, and allowed to transcend the browser for handling. The purpose of HTML5's media is to somewhat standardize a common encoding (lowest common denominator if you will) across platforms and have a browser-native player. The Ogg container and various encodings make perfect sense.

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