Firefox for Windows Now Runs Netflix via HTML5

After a long wait, Mozilla has announced that Firefox for Windows now works with Netflix’s HTML5 video player. And, Netflix promised the functionality would come to Firefox for Mac users “next year.” Slowly but surely, Firefox is catching up to competitive browsers in enabling key applications and cloud services. Run Google Chrome on Ubuntu, and Netflix works out of the box, but Firefox hasn't provided such a smooth path.

Here is more on what Mozilla and Netflix announced.

Mozilla said:

"Netflix announced today that their HTML5 video player now supports Firefox on Windows Vista and later using Adobe’s new Primetime CDM (Content Decryption Module). This means Netflix fans can watch their favorite shows on Firefox without installing NPAPI plugins."

"As we announced earlier this year, Mozilla has been working with Adobe and Netflix to enable HTML5 video playback. This is an important step on Mozilla’s roadmap to deprecate NPAPI plugins. Adobe’s Primetime CDM runs in Mozilla’s open-source CDM sandbox, providing better user security compared to NPAPI plugins."

 Netflix said:

"Firefox ships with the very latest versions of the HTML5 Premium Video Extensions. That includes the Media Source Extensions (MSE), which enable our video streaming algorithms to adapt to your available bandwidth; the Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), which allows for the viewing of protected content; and the Web Cryptography API (WebCrypto), which implements the cryptographic functions used by our open source Message Security Layer client-server protocol. We worked closely with Mozilla and Adobe throughout development."

Of course, we've covered Mozilla's and Google's effort to deprecate NPAPI plugins at length.  The teams behind the Firefox and Chrome browsers decreed that the longstanding Netscape Plug-in API (NPAPI), which extensions have worked with for many years, is the source of many performance and security problems.