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Enable MP4 (H.264 + AAC) HTML5 video in Firefox on Windows XP without Flash


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10 minutes ago, Bersaglio said:

Firefox 52.0 ESR released! All is working! Yeehaw!:w00t:

That's nice of them, releasing a day early and right after I said it was gonna be tomorrow :P Well, at least the RC2 I tested was indeed identical to the release version. I won't have time to test the internal update procedure until tomorrow, so reports on whether it has any quirks compared to what I described in my previous post, and whether it has already switched update channels from release to esr are appreciated.

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Just to clarify for everyone, Windows XP and Vista are both being automatically switched to the Extended Support Release channel and can continue to use plugins to their heart's content and receive security updates for the lifespan of Firefox 52 ESR.

Edited by ThomasW
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About false memory leak reports with FireFox 52.0 ESR under Windows XP: please type 'about:addons' in address bar then press Enter (select Plugins tab on the left if not selected).

Please disable all plugins except

1. Videocodec OpenH264 by Cisco Systems, Inc. 1.6

2. Adobe Primetime Content Decription Module by Adobe Systems, Incorporated 17 (It's our everything)

3. Shockwave Flash 24.0.0.211 (more known as Adobe Flash Player Plugin 24.0.0.211)

4. Silverlight Plug-In 5.1.50901.0

All other plugins and unverified extensions may (and probably will) cause a memory leak.

P.S. By the way, memory leak can cause 'Generic host process for Win32' errors [svchost.exe stops responding because of insufficient memory...]

Edited by Bersaglio
P.S.
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My copy of Firefox 51.1.0 on Windows XP still says it's up to date if I check, but my copy of 51.1.0 on Windows 10 offered an update to 52.0.
Is that expected behaviour, and will the ESR version of 52.0 not be offered by the update mechanism on XP?
Should I just wait until it is or will I actually have to update manually on XP?
I am using the 64 bit version on Windows 10 if that makes any difference.
:dubbio:
 

Edited by Dave-H
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If you are pressed, do this with Firefox closed :

Quote

1) change defaults/pref/channel-prefs.js to use "esr"

2) change update-settings.ini to accept "firefox-mozilla-esr" MAR files.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1318922#c5

these 2 files are in the installation folder (Program Files > Mozilla Firefox by defaut)

then you can update to 52.0esr by the menu "Help" > about Firefox

;)

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2 hours ago, dencorso said:

It makes no sense: why would an unverified extension non-leaking under 51.1.0 become leaking under 52.0 esr?

Look: all NPAPI plug-ins are disabled by default in regular FF 52.0 unlike 52.0 ESR. Many Windows XP users kept outdated plug-ins/extensions (including Adobe Acrobat PDF, Microsoft Office Live Plugin for FF, Microsoft DRM, RealPlayer/QuickTime plugins, Windows Media Player DLL Plug-in, Windows Presentation Foundation plug-in and so on). It seems that besides carrying a potential security threat few of them are also became incompatible with latest version. It's better to disable them anyway, isn't it?

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59 minutes ago, patclash said:

If you are pressed, do this with Firefox closed :

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1318922#c5

these 2 files are in the installation folder (Program Files > Mozilla Firefox by defaut)

then you can update to 52.0esr by the menu "Help" > about Firefox

;)

I was only wondering because I read on a Mozilla support page somewhere that XP and Vista users would be "automatically" moved onto the ESR version of Firefox 52, so I assumed that it would just happen automatically as stated!
I'll leave it a while to see if it does, otherwise I will probably just update manually as you suggest.
Thanks, Dave.
:)
 

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27 minutes ago, Dave-H said:

I was only wondering because I read on a Mozilla support page somewhere that XP and Vista users would be "automatically" moved onto the ESR version of Firefox 52, so I assumed that it would just happen automatically as stated!

Dave, I believe it can take few weeks (up to month) until this mechanism will be involved and all XP/Vista users will really be automatically transferred to the FF 52.x ESR. But You can manually update FF at any time.

Edited by Bersaglio
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10 hours ago, Dave-H said:

I was only wondering because I read on a Mozilla support page somewhere that XP and Vista users would be "automatically" moved onto the ESR version of Firefox 52, so I assumed that it would just happen automatically as stated!

It wasn't happening yesterday, but it is now (at least it worked for me just now, things may be different regionally). If you run the update check manually, you may have to do it twice: first to switch to the esr channel, then to get the actual update. You'll probably have to re-add some prefs to get HTML5 video working again after the undate.

Edited by mixit
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10 hours ago, Bersaglio said:

Look: all NPAPI plug-ins are disabled by default in regular FF 52.0 unlike 52.0 ESR. Many Windows XP users kept outdated plug-ins/extensions (including Adobe Acrobat PDF, Microsoft Office Live Plugin for FF, Microsoft DRM, RealPlayer/QuickTime plugins, Windows Media Player DLL Plug-in, Windows Presentation Foundation plug-in and so on). It seems that besides carrying a potential security threat few of them are also became incompatible with latest version. It's better to disable them anyway, isn't it?

If people are seeing memory leaks, they should report them on Bugzilla, because 52.0 ESR is still supposed to work with all NPAPI plugins, that's kind of the whole point of leaving them enabled there as opposed to the regular 52.0 (where they can still be enabled by a pref, though). Right now, I'm not seeing any recent Bugzilla reports on this sort of thing happening, at least not with using the most obvious search terms.

Edited by mixit
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5 hours ago, mixit said:

It wasn't happening yesterday, but it is now (at least it worked for me just now, things may be different regionally). If you run the update check manually, you may have to do it twice: first to switch to the esr channel, then to get the actual update. You'll probably have to re-add some prefs to get HTML5 video working again after the undate.

Thanks, yes 52 ESR is now being offered for me too when I select "About Firefox" so it must have just taken a while to come through.
:yes:

EDIT: Now updated successfully. I did have to add several configuration options back to get the Adobe video plugin to work again, but it seems fine now. The first time I selected to update in the "About Firefox" dialogue, it just switched to the ESR channel, but didn't actually update, so I had to do it a second time, at which point it did.


 

Edited by Dave-H
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I just got a popup for the new Firefox 52 ESR!

I clicked on the release notes and find this:
"Removed support for Netscape Plugin API (NPAPI) plugins other than Flash. Silverlight, Java, Acrobat and the like are no longer supported."

But also this: "Migrated Firefox users on Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems to the extended support release (ESR) version of Firefox."

The updater links to the mainstream Firefox 52 Release Notes.  I searched for Firefox ESR Release Notes and they don't seem to exist!  I don't understand this, since they have release notes for every other version of Firefox so why not the ESR?

Is NPAPI support the only thing that differs for the mainstream Firefox 52?

Do I just trust this is the case?

Can anyone confirm that NPAPI plugins other than Shockwave Flash operate in this new release?

Thanks!

Firefox 52 Release Notes.PNG

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