New Firefox Aurora can record your cam, mic

[nsane.forums]

The browser is powering up with hardware controls, and the latest Firefox for developers can record directly from a camera or microphone.

Firefox's getUserMedia test page.

As the browser becomes the driving engine behind several operating systems, extensive hardware controls are landing as built-in HTML5. The latest developer's build of Firefox Aurora can now record by default video from your camera and audio from your microphone.

Firefox 20 Aurora (download for Windows, for Mac, for Linux, and for Android) has the new hardware API getUserMedia enabled by default, which means that you won't have to use a plugin to record directly from your local camera or mic. In her blog post announcing the update, Maire Reavy, Firefox's product lead on media, provided an example of how to use the gUM API.

Also, she noted that gUM is the first API component of WebRTC, which eventually will allow real-time audio and video calls, and data sharing, through the browser. Other components of WebRTC are not yet ready to be on by default, she wrote.

The W3C hasn't finalized the gUM API standard, either, so for now Firefox maker Mozilla is keeping the API prefix of MozGetUserMedia. This means that if you're using Chrome or another WebKit-driven browser to test demos, you'll have to adjust the navigator.webkitGetUserMedia to include the "moz" prefix.

Further changes in Firefox 20 Aurora include adjustments to private browsing, which turns off local recording of your browsing history and cookies. On desktop Firefox 20, you'll be able to enable private browsing on a per-tab basis, which in Firefox 20 for Android the feature will be available per-window.

A new download manager is also coming to desktop Firefox, as well as the ability to close a frozen plugin without the tab itself hanging. Performance improvements will affect page load times, download management, and browser shutdown.

In Firefox for Android, the browser gets Gingerbread and Honeycomb support for H.264, AAC, and MP3 decoders. The mobile browser's system requirements have been lowered, as well, so that it works on devices with QVGA displays and 384 MB of RAM.

You can read full release notes for Firefox 20 Aurora for desktop and Firefox 20 Aurora for Android.

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[DKT27]

Just had a look at the releasenotes, looks great. :)

[JessicaLeigh]

This is a wonderful addition!

[0veR]

Awesome :D

[Alhaitham]

Nice

[calguyhunk]

Remember when Firefox (Navigator) used to be a ~2GB MB D/l and that used to take minutes on a dial-up connection? :P Today, it is a ~20GB MB download :o (even though it takes less than a minute)

But all these added extras are bloating it up to the extent that I'm afraid, in not too distant a future, it might well become the next Nero Burning Suite :( What started off as a tiny precise disk burning program that did it's job of burning videos, images etc. extremely efficiently - with multi-session support - started bloating up to the extent that it became almost unusable for the most part :nono:

Remember when Nero, Winamp and Winzip were installed as default on your PC by the friendly neighborhood PC guy? (At least they used to in India :P ) Not anymore. That's 'cuz we got better, more efficient and less space consuming options ;)

I sincerely hope that FF isn't going that way :nono: I hope they're not trying to be - in Microsoft's Win8 lingo - "

" They might just end up being 'Nothing for anyone' :(

P.S. - IMO these readers, recorders, downloaders, etc. should come as 'Opt-In' extras so as not to annoy people who do not want them ;)

[DKT27]

Remember when Firefox (Navigator) used to be a ~2GB D/l and that used to take minutes on a dial-up connection? :P Today, it is a ~20GB download :o (even though it takes less than a minute)

But all these added extras are bloating it up to the extent that I'm afraid, in not too distant a future, it might well become the next Nero Burning Suite :( What started off as a tiny precise disk burning program that did it's job of burning videos, images etc. extremely efficiently - with multi-session support - started bloating up to the extent that it became almost unusable for the most part :nono:

Remember when Nero, Winamp and Winzip were installed as default on your PC by the friendly neighborhood PC guy? (At least they used to in India :P ) Not anymore. That's 'cuz we got better, more efficient and less space consuming options ;)

I sincerely hope that FF isn't going that way :nono: I hope they're not trying to be - in Microsoft's Win8 lingo - "

" They might just end up being 'Nothing for anyone' :(

P.S. - IMO these readers, recorders, downloaders, etc. should come as 'Opt-In' extras so as not to annoy people who do not want them ;)

GB? Or MB? :P

Unlike other softwares, Mozilla has non-bloat aims in their mind. Whenever the Mozilla leader feels this feature might add bloat, he specifically asks it's devs to make sure it doesn't.

Some features are important for the browsers to move forward. In browser wars, people care more about how fast it "looks", how cool it is (socially, not personally) and how many HTML5 score it gets. Having said, even other browsers are implementing these features.

Actually, these feature requires one/two less plugins, so I don't see anything negative.

[Shadowx]

Good work Kyuubi

[calguyhunk]

GB? Or MB? :P

LOL! :P But now that you think of it, the new Chromium concept of browser/OS may someday actually result in a 2GB browser file size, who knows? :think:

Actually, these feature requires one/two less plugins, so I don't see anything negative.

Yeah, me neither. Better safe than sorry though, I guess :yes: Having said that though, plugins are optional add-ons that you add only if you need 'em. Not permanent millstones that you have to tag along whether you want it or not. That's why maybe making it an optional install rather than mandatory may not necessarily be a good idea. ;)

Personally speaking, I like the pdf.js integration. It's my default reader for both web and local files :yes: No Adobe Reader on my PC, thank you :D

I'm also excited about the integrated torrent client if and when that materializes. As long as it has all the requisite features and lets you add the Ipfilter.dat :yes:

But again, I hope that they don't get carried away with the broadly positive feedback thus far from the community, 'cuz if there's one thing that power users don't want - that's bloat :yes:

[ASIO]

cool !!!

[mjall]

i think it's a job well done; and I agree with what is mentioned above about the size of good apps that turn with time into a big app in size to install and they ruin the GUI with lots of stuff to load that consumes unnecessary memory

[edwardecl]

As long as a feature does not hinder other features then it's OK.

Letting the browser have direct access to hardware is a bit dubious though. How long until someone exploits it to get nasty webcam images :). Especially compromised pr0n sites...

[software182]

wow, but i dont use FF now, prefer use IceDragon than this :p

[calguyhunk]

wow, but i dont use FF now, prefer use IceDragon than this :P

A lot of us use Palemoon, Waterfox etc. but for all practical purposes, they are all basically FF under the hood, only by a different name with a few tweaks. Ask Shakespeare (What's in a name?) :P The basic underlying code still comes from Mozilla, but then you already know that :yes:

I used to use PM till recently. But migrated to FF 'cuz PM is still stuck at version 15 when the world (read FF) has moved on to 18 stable. I'm on 19 beta with so many more feature additions and security enhancements ;)

This particular feature will obviously be present in all of those aforementioned variants as default unless the dev of any particular variant (Comodo in the case of ID) disables the feature intentionall for one reason or the other ;)