WeWantOgg.com!

Hi everyone!

We've released a new small campaign website:

<font size="5">WeWantOgg.com</font>

For reference on the problems with HTML5 audio, see:

http://www.scirra.com/blog/46/more-on-html5-audio-codecs-and-politics

We appreciate any support we get, hopefully we can get IE and Safari to support Ogg Vorbis which would be a huge benefit to all of us!

As many of you know, the audio situation in HTML5 is pretty bad, and it's making life unnecessarily difficult for us at Scirra. If you could spread the word, that would be great! It might be a long shot, but hopefully we can catch the attention of Apple and Microsoft if lots of people get involved. Spread the link!

Totally agree, we need that. (also would be great if there was one video format).

What if I'll make a Czech translation of the page (and I believe, there are users who'd translate it into other languages). Would it be possible to switch the language automatically according to the ip of a viewer? I you're ok, I could send you the translation tomorrow.

What if I'll make a Czech translation of the page (and I believe, there are users who'd translate it into other languages). Would it be possible to switch the language automatically according to the ip of a viewer? I you're ok, I could send you the translation tomorrow.

Good idea. And if not switching, at least proposing little flag buttons to access the proper language (I love little flags buttons on webpages ^^)

Kyatric has been great giving us a French translations, all translations are very welcome!   Noga feel free to PM me a translation any time if you have the time to do so.

I've just uploaded some images on the campaign site people are free to use on their websites.

Good idea, these browser politics are getting ridiculous. Though I have to mention again, why go for OGG when WebM is same audio codec and is more likely to be productive. E.g. it already enjoys special support in IE9 that OGG still doesn't have, in the form of recognizing WebM MIME in the <audio> and <video> tag and playing it through plugin, whereas an OGG plugin has not been approved and MIME for OGG are not treated with similar regard.

The point is that it might be an easier battle to support WebM since you have google in your corner.

Juryiel, I actually think going for WebM might make it tougher. Microsoft and Apple probably don't want to be seen to endorse anything Google comes up with, but Ogg is more or less totally neutral. WebM still stores Vorbis audio as well, so one probably comes with the other. Also, Ogg has been around for 10 years now and WebM just over one year - tools, existing libraries, and general support for Ogg is probably better as a result. Anyways, it doesn't really matter, Ogg is fine so we're all in for that.

Microsoft willingly added WebM MIME type support in IE9, but has not done so for OGG, that was my point, that they are already partially supporting WebM. I don't think they'll ever support OGG but google may pressure them into WebM by leveraging its giant web presence, as they seem to have already done somewhat. So what I mean is it actually isn't the case that one will come with the other. It's not just an issue of supporting Codecs. IE9 <audio> tag can use any codecs installed in Windows 7 for example but you'll notice that if you install Vorbis codec you still can't play OGG because IE9 will never support that MIME type in the HTML5 tags. Xiph doesn't have the leverage to make them.

WebM has also been around for a while as it is a derivative of the Matroska container.

In any case I think the two players here will be WebM and AAC. Everyone else is backed by someone way too small.

Hmm. Well, if our campaign persuades them to use WebM-contained Vorbis, that's a win for us anyway.

What I mean is, IE9 already does play Vorbis codec. Not natively, but IE9 will play that codec if you install it on a client and then have the webserver serve a WebM MIME, but not an OGG with the same Vorbis encoding.

So yeah, I agree, I like the campaign and if it has an effect that would be great, regardless of which wins (OGG or WebM is irrelevant to me). I just thought I'd point out that it would be a more effective campaign if you backed the stronger candidate that already has partial support.

Also, apple, with 4% ish browser userbase in Safari, is sort of a triviality. The don't really have any clout and will probably have ot follow suit with whatever format Microsoft, Google, and Mozilla dictate.

Yeah we debated whether we should target IE AND Safari, and decided to in the end. It makes it less of a IE-hate fest which we see enough of already and we wanted to separate ourselves from that.

Many professional pc user already use chrome or firefox. ie looses its market share day to day. And I guess half of ie's market share comes from ie6 beceause of unconscious xp users. Don't get me wrong but statistics says so. And this is(ogg support) also a good point for 2 age chrome and firefox power.

Still of course I support your site.

IF people could upvote the HackerNews submission:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2832873

This is exactly the right target audience and if you get on the front page you can get thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of people checking it out.

Shouldn't the website be about Ogg Theora vs H.264 too? You'll have the same problem with video as with sound if they don't go for Theora.