multimedia and browsers on freebsd

[Marcel Dijk]

>
>
>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.
>  
>
And I am using WindowMaker. For browsing I use Netsscape 7, a very nice 
release I might say, albeit a touch slow. It can handle flash (out of 
the box) and I think there is good java support too but I never tested that.

I watch multimedia streams with mplayer (ports). It can handle very much 
kinds of streams and formats. Last time I used it was for the 
Skynews.com stream (mplayer live.asx), works nice. It also has 
realplayer and QT support. With a RPM on the site you can also get it as 
a plugin in Netscape, but I also never tested that.

BTW Mozilla != Netscape 7, Netscape isn't that "commie oriented" and 
works better.

OK, that where my 2 (euro) cents.

Gr.

Marcel.