FF 52 does not play Facebook video (Win XP)

[Unhappy]

Firefox ESR 52.1.2 (32-bit) running on XP Pro, SP 3, refuses to run video on Facebook. Latest Adobe installed, cache cleared, accelerator unchecked...nothing works. Seems to me that two of the biggest internet visual applications (Firefox and Adobe) ought to be able to agree on code that produces a functioning product. Don't want to quit Firefox, but this is an unacceptable situation. What good is the nifty add-on video downloader if a video won't play in the first place?

[DanRaisch]

Moving to Firefox Support.

[James]

It is more due to using the old EOL WinXP (April 2014). Microsoft only supports Windows Vista and later with the needed codecs for the HTML5 player.

You can see the limits of what your system supports with HTML5 videos as all check marks should be blue on https://www.youtube.com/html5/ for a system that fully supports.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/fi ... ox-windows

Not sure if this still works on WinXP.
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/175591- ... out-flash/

Note Firefox 53.0 and later requires Windows 7 or later.

Besides using Firefox on Windows Vista or 7 or newer you could dual boot with a Linux distro. I do suggest using a light windows manager like XFCE over say GNOME 3 or KDE.

[Happy112]

@Unhappy :

Complete stab in the dark, but :
Do you by any chance have an extension like Flashblock installed ?
If so : would you disable it and see if that makes a difference ?

[JayhawksRock]

Make sure you are signed in to Your Facebook Account and try these tests
https://www.facebook.com/help/104155365 ... ef=hc_fnav

[ScaleCraft]

Make sure you are signed in to Your Facebook Account and try these tests
https://www.facebook.com/help/104155365 ... ef=hc_fnav

None of those tests do any good at all.
We used Developer, it's MP4 not supported. I have XP on three machines, in a week or so it will be four.
I can play MP4 everywhere but FacePlant.
It is a combination of FacePlant and FireFox.
FireFox is trying to force us into the same Brave, New World that MS and FB is doing.
Try to load an older version of an add-on that will work with your system...and it won't, because FF thinks it's "corrupt"
When FB gets their head out of their...well you get the idea....and we stop having them block usage on 12 million admitted computers worldwide, it will get fixed.

[malliz]

Microsoft are the ones who dropped support you can hardly blame Mozilla for that plus you are the one buying/scavenging old pc's with a very old OS so either install a more modern OS (one of the Linux variants would work fine and are free) or stop whining

[dickvl]

Do you see any media related error messages in the Web Console?
https://developer.mozilla.org/Tools/Web_Console

[ScaleCraft]

Microsoft are the ones who dropped support you can hardly blame Mozilla for that plus you are the one buying/scavenging old pc's with a very old OS so either install a more modern OS (one of the Linux variants would work fine and are free) or stop whining

You can when MP4, HTML5 and anything else plays outside of FireFox....and when you find an old copy of Chrome (49.0) and load it, on XP, it plays FaceBook videos fine.


Let's see. XP, FireFox, Facebook, no videos.
XP, Chrome, Facebook, videos good.

What's the difference here?

Not buying...free...not scavenging...I like XP.
I have been a staunch, loyal supporter of FireFox for a long, long time.
This added to the new "security" garbage to prevent add-ons FireFox deems unsafe from working...well, it's MY computer, I want them to run.

[dickvl]

Google Chrome uses built-in means to play MP4 files.
Firefox relies in native OS support to play MP4 files because of licensing issues.
A website would have to support WebM to make it work on XP

See e.g.:
Bug 1244900 - Since upgrading to Firefox 44 on XP, Some Youtube videos only play at 360p, with link to download chrome/etc if you click "Missing Quality"

Please do not comment in bug reports, see:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html

[James]

Microsoft are the ones who dropped support you can hardly blame Mozilla for that plus you are the one buying/scavenging old pc's with a very old OS so either install a more modern OS (one of the Linux variants would work fine and are free) or stop whining

You can when MP4, HTML5 and anything else plays outside of FireFox....and when you find an old copy of Chrome (49.0) and load it, on XP, it plays FaceBook videos fine.


Let's see. XP, FireFox, Facebook, no videos.
XP, Chrome, Facebook, videos good.

What's the difference here?

Not buying...free...not scavenging...I like XP.
I have been a staunch, loyal supporter of FireFox for a long, long time.
This added to the new "security" garbage to prevent add-ons FireFox deems unsafe from working...well, it's MY computer, I want them to run.

Again Facebook like many sites of late uses HTML5 for player and not using the Flash Player Plugin.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/fi ... ox-windows

As said Microsoft only supports Windows Vista and later with codecs provided by a Windows Media Feature Pack. For those using KN or N version of Windows Vista or later they have to install this manually.

The codecs is what is needed for HTML5 player to fully work in browsers like Firefox and SeaMonkey. Mozilla is not going to do any workarounds just to support the old EOL WinXP (April 2014) and no the hack for security updates meant for cashier's/atm's do not count.

You may think but it works in the outdated Chrome 49.x however Chrome kind of cheats by coming with codecs for HTML5 player to work in old Chrome to work for now at least.

Google dropped support of Windows XP and Vista since the Chrome 50 Release in April 2016 and the Chrome you have is rather vulnerable now as a result.

I gave you a link of a possible workaround earlier for WinXP but not sure if it still works.
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/175591- ... out-flash/

[ScaleCraft]

"Windows Embedded Standard 2009. This product is an updated release of the toolkit and componentized version of Windows XP. It was originally released in 2008; and Extended Support will end on Jan. 8, 2019."
"Windows Embedded POSReady 2009. This product for point-of-sale devices reflects the updates available in Windows Embedded Standard 2009. It was originally released in 2009, and extended support will end on April 9, 2019."

A while to go on my machines, and FireFox won't support it?
Okay.
Answers my last question

[malliz]

Embedded means the versions of XP that run teller machines et'c
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_X ... P_Embedded

[Unhappy]

Wow!! I got a lot of replies, many of them beyond my ken, as I am not knowledgeable about how the computer computes..but...the common thread seems to be my outdated OS. That can be remedied, and I will probably have to do that, as more and more applications are no longer functioning well on XP. Thumbs down for Microsoft dumping XP...it is rock solid, the GUI is familiar and predictable, it is not a memory hog (as far as I can discern it). I recently acquired a some older HP laptop that is running Win 7 Pro, 64-bit, and I have the overall impression that it is a reincarnation of Windows Vista...which also, as far as I can tell, was one of Microsoft's flops. Any case, I will see what happens with the Facebook/Firefox conflict on that machine. Thanks to all and I will return to the thread...

[malliz]

Actually Win 7 is better than Vista by a country mile and it's really not related at all