14 DAY TRIAL // Google is making the WebM plugin for Internet Explorer 9 official with an announcement on the WebM Project blog along with more info from Microsoft. While the plugin was developed especially to enable IE9 to play WebM videos, it's built on top of the of Microsoft Media Foundation meaning that the WebM codecs are installed natively enabling any Windows app to make use of them.
"Today we're making available a preview release of Microsoft Media Foundation (MF) components for WebM," Matthew Heaney, a Software Engineer for the WebM Project, announced.
"When these components are installed in Windows they enable rendering of WebM media in Microsoft Internet Explorer 9," he explained.
"Because the components are installed directly in Windows, the components can also render WebM in other applications that support MF, such as Windows Media Player 12 on Windows 7," he added.
The WebM Video for Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 components have been available for download for a few days now, but Google and Microsoft are only now making the announcements.
After installing the components, WebM video should be playable not only in IE9 but in any other Windows application that uses the MF, which should be any media-centric app unless it uses its own built-in codec libraries, like VLC.
Microsoft has said it won't be building support for WebM into IE9 since it believes there may be uncertainties about its licensing status. Google however, pledged to build WebM plugins for both IE and Safari.
With the help of Microsoft, Google is now releasing the WebM IE9 plugin, though it's still a technology preview so there may be issues.
"Microsoft Media Foundation is a powerful and flexible API that allowed us to seamlessly integrate WebM with Windows, providing a great HTML5 user experience in IE9," Google showed some love for Microsoft's technology.
"Microsoft collaborated closely with us to make the components fully compatible with HTML5 in IE9, so features such as the <video> tag and its canPlayType method are fully enabled for WebM," Google continued.
Microsoft wasn't feeling so warm and fuzzy, though, and couldn't help taking a stab at Google in its announcement of the WebM plugin.
"The people who build and use the Web deserve practical and consistent video support rather than ideology," Dean Hachamovitch, Corporate Vice President of Internet Explorer, wrote referring to Google's decision to drop support for H.264 from Chrome. As of Google Chrome 11, H.264 is still being supported.