multimedia and browsers on freebsd

[Johnson David]

On Thursday 24 April 2003 10:51 am, Tom wrote:
> hi all,
>
> what has been your experience getting *any* browser to work with:
>
> java
> video
> audio
> flash
> and all the other goodies

I don't use a browser for it's "goodies", but to browse content. But I 
have gotten some of the stuff to work in Konqueror. Java is easy. 
Install java then point Konqueror to it. Audio works "out-of-the-box" 
in Konqueror for all *standard* formats. Quicktime won't work so don't 
try. Flash will work with Mozilla but not Konqueror, if you install the 
flashpluginwrapper. A future Konqueror should handle it as well 
according to some rumours. The plugger port will allow a few other 
things to work as well.

Why don't these "goodies" work very well with FreeBSD (and Linux)? 
Because most of these "goodies" are proprietary non-standard protocols. 
In my opinion, life is too short to waste time on many of these. But 
things are changing. Software is still a very young industry. As with 
all young industries, standards are slow to arrive. Consider the early 
railroad industry, which had a bewildering variety of incompatible 
track gauges. Eventually they settled on a standard. Software will do 
the same, and IS doing the same, but it will take some time.

David