Author Topic: Firefox Hello  (Read 8975 times)

Martin Iturbide

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Firefox Hello
« on: January 15, 2015, 01:07:17 am »
Hi

I noticed today that on other platforms (Windows/Linux/Mac/Android) Firefox got updated to version 35.0

It has a new feature called "Firefox Hello" which is a video and voice conference tool. It can be interesting to know to dependecies of this new video conference tool, if it is complete open and if can be feasible to be ported with firefox on the future.

I can not say that I had tried the tool too much, but it looks very interesting to have a open video conferencing tool supported by Mozilla.

Regards

Martin Iturbide
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guzzi

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Re: Firefox Hello
« Reply #1 on: January 15, 2015, 01:23:20 am »
Wim has written code for the usb drivers to handle some webcams. That is a first step. But I think, and I could be wrong here, that there would be an additional layer of software needed for firefox to be able to handle the camera. I personally would be very happy to see that feature implemented, especially if it could be used as a replacement for Skype.

Dave Yeo

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Re: Firefox Hello
« Reply #2 on: January 15, 2015, 04:02:56 am »
Knowing Mozilla it is probably open though as guzzi says, there would have to be an operating system layer to interface with. There's also the question of what codec the video uses.
The other thing that has been added into recent releases is support for H264 video. Cisco is making a library available at http://www.openh264.org/ and is covering the licensing costs if you download the binary from them (Firefox downloads the library when needed). Probably be easy to port but they'd have to build it which would mean that they'd need an OS/2 license and script to build it.
There's a good chance that Firefox Hello uses H264 as it is supported in hardware on most platforms including mobile where using hardware decoding uses much less power.
As usual it is having the developers to develop and we don't have many and the ones we do have are busy. I'd just like to have an up to date, stable browser.

Alex Taylor

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Re: Firefox Hello
« Reply #3 on: January 15, 2015, 02:20:07 pm »
It probably uses WebRTC, it's one of the newer HTML5 standards.  Basically it allows video/webcam input without any need for plugins or host-OS software (assuming your OS has webcam drivers, of course).

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Firefox Hello
« Reply #4 on: January 15, 2015, 03:27:09 pm »
From what I'm reading it says it sues WebRTC.
http://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2014/10/16/test-the-new-firefox-hello-webrtc-feature-in-firefox-beta/

Quote
WebRTC is a free, open project that provides browsers and mobile applications with Real-Time Communications (RTC) capabilities via simple APIs. The WebRTC components have been optimized to best serve this purpose.  http://www.webrtc.org/

Does it means that WebRTC needs to be ported to OS2-eCS? or it is partially ported on the latest firefox version?

I checked this WebRTC ready test with the latest ported firefox. - http://iswebrtcready.appear.in/.
It says that RTCPeerConnection and ICE connection are not supported. This two components are missing for our platform.
Martin Iturbide
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Martin Iturbide

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Re: Firefox Hello
« Reply #5 on: January 15, 2015, 03:37:12 pm »
Also some other info: http://www.tokbox.com/blog/firefox-hello-mozilla-enhances-opentok-powered-video-chat-service/

Firefox hello is based in a software called "OpenTok", which is the videoconfence software that requires WebRTC.
Martin Iturbide
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Dave Yeo

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Re: Firefox Hello
« Reply #6 on: January 15, 2015, 07:42:23 pm »
Webrtc is in our Mozilla tree but it is not enabled. I'd imagine that we need some logic to connect to webcam drivers.