On Android, that means using libstagefright (the platform’s multimedia framework) to support playback in Firefox. Double landed support for software-based decoding through libstagefright earlier this month. His new patch, which was published in the Mozilla issue tracker on Monday, builds on the earlier work to add hardware-accelerated decoding support where available.
The software decoding support appears to be on track for inclusion in Firefox for Android 17, which will enter the Aurora channel at the end of the month. The hardware acceleration support is still a preliminary patch. It will be a little while before these features are available to end users in a stable release, but the work is very promising.
Support for native H.264 decoding is a welcome addition to Firefox on Android, especially with Adobe moving to phase out mobile versions of the Flash player browser plug-in. Thanks to libstagefright-based H.264 support, Firefox users on Android will still be able to play much of the video content that is available for the mobile Web.