The video kaleidoscope now works in Firefox (at least from version 3.5+.) In my previous post, I mentioned some cross-browser issues; let’s have another look at them.

First, media format issues: since Firefox and Safari do not support the same formats, I needed at least a “default” video in Ogg format, which I found on TinyVid. Then, instead of simply specifying an src attribute on the video element, we skip that attribute and add two child source nodes for the video element, one for an H.264-encoded movie, the other for an Ogg Theora-encoded movie. Normally, we would want to provide the same movie in different formats, but until I provide my own movies for this demo, we'll just use interesting videos that we find online.

Second, I noted how I could not get the canplaythrough event from the video element in Firefox, even though a playable video was provided. The problem lies in the fact that Safari buffers the video by default, even when the autobuffer attribute is not present, whereas Firefox doesn’t. After adding this attribute, things work the same in both browsers.

Get the new Firefox 3.6 and see for yourself!