

If Mozilla has its way, you'll soon be able to watch streaming video on sites all over the web without ever having to use a plug-in.

The software maker announced Monday that native support for the open-source Threora video format will be added to Firefox 3.1, the next version of its popular web browser. Theora files can be embedded directly into web pages just like images and viewed in any browser that supports Theora playback – no plug-in to download, no special software to install.

Furthermore, Mozilla has set up a $100,000 grant to foster the development of new tools, player technologies and codec enhancements to display, store and stream Theora videos and its companion Vorbis audio format. The grant will be administered by the non-profit Wikimedia foundation.

Mozilla VP of engineering Mike Shaver and Mozilla director of evangelism Christopher Blizzard both have detailed posts about the announcement. There's also a post on the official Mozilla blog.

Monday's news is sure to cause a heap of worry at Adobe, Apple and Microsoft. The giants own the web's leading media playback and streaming technologies, and collect the lucrative licensing payments for their use.

Both audio and video on the web are currently wrapped up in a mess of proprietary file formats, patents and downloadable software players that need to be frequently updated. The clear leader is Adobe Flash, the near-ubiquitous technology used by YouTube, Google Video and almost every website currently streaming video or audio. The Flash Player plug-in is free, and much of the code behind it has recently been released under a permissive open-source license. But the Adobe's authoring tools are expensive, and large-scale deployments of Flash content require proprietary, enterprise-class server software. Further down the food chain are Apple's QuickTime and Microsoft's Silverlight playback technologies.

And let us not forget MP3, the king of digital media formats, and its many offshoots. Any software maker who wants to create a program that plays MP3 audio or the high-definition H.264 video format must pay a licensing fee back to the patent holders.

Theora and Vorbis are both free of such restrictions. They are distributed under an open-source license, and they have been championed by free software proponents for years with (so far) little headway.

The stewards of the web have had plans for an open video standard for some time, however. The WHAT Working Group, a non-profit organization that researches emerging web standards, has included plans for open-source video and audio playback in its draft for the HTML 5 specification. HTML 5 is widely expected to become ratified as the web's default markup language in the coming years.

While modern browsers are only expected to follow recommendations that have already been finalized, there's nothing holding browser makers back from adopting and nurturing the bleeding-edge stuff as well. Opera has also embraced Theora for video playback – the company has built experimental support into the latest versions of its browser.

So, all Mozilla is really doing is getting a head start. The difference is that it's also putting a whole lot of money where it's mouth is.

There's little chance Theora support in Firefox will dislodge Flash as the dominant video format on the web anytime soon. Adobe's technology is too fully baked into the user experience, and only 21% or so of web surfers use Firefox. But native support in Firefox will be a huge step towards removing the barrier currently dissuading people from posting Theora video.

Right now, Flash is the only sensible choice. Hopefully, Mozilla's initiative will change that.