What, exactly, is making the website work fine on Chrome/Edge but not on Firefox? Are you using some bleeding-edge API that isn't available in Firefox yet?
In my experience it's simply developer resources. In my entire career, I've never seen a complex web app "just work" across multiple browsers without some, if not a lot of, effort.
Testing on all browsers all the time is a significant cost to velocity. It almost always makes more sense to build for a single browser first, then figure out where the comparability issues are once you have an actual product.
> It almost always makes more sense to build for a single browser first, then figure out where the comparability issues are once you have an actual product.
I agree, and most places I've worked with has been the same. But I think only once, after following that process, have we ended up in "Damn, this works 100% in Chrome but is completely broken in Firefox". Sometimes something works faster/slower in Chrome/Firefox, but without requiring something like the Web MIDI API, most things just works the same across browsers, minus some minor things regarding CSS that has to be taken into consideration.
I guess what I'm looking for with my previous comment, is not so much of a general/philosophical answer of "Why you block Firefox but not Chrome?" but rather a specific answer to "What ended up being broken in Firefox but working in Chrome?"
Mostly helpful for my own curiosity, but in the strange case of finding things that works in Chrome but not Firefox, leaving a report at https://webcompat.com/ can be very helpful for the general health of the web as well.
In my experience it's subtle bugs that don't appear on one platform but do in the other. webcompat is great for true deviations from the spec but there are plenty of cases where things work for no good reason and it's a chore to figure out why.
I'm also a bit curious why blocking Firefox is preferred versus stating which browsers are supported.
Adding the thing that complains is a one-time cost. It may work on Firefox now, but making sure that it continues working on Firefox is a continuous resource investment.
And not adding it and not testing for Firefox would cost nothing, and currently improve the user experience - because it actually just works, as a lot of things just do.
But then what if a bug in their code that only affects FF goes unnoticed due to testing, and causes significant problems for a big client, or a journalist reviewing it, or...
Personally I feel a "We don't officially support this browser, it probably works but we only test for full compatibility in <these browsers>" is a better option if you're going to go in that direction.
But I can understand why even that is a bit of a risk as if a user decides to ignore that warning and then some time later encounters a bug that, let's say, causes them to lose half a day of work, they're likely to walk away blaming the company (and maybe go round telling people they know what a shit thing it is) even if the bug wouldn't have happened had they been using one of the browsers that is fully supported and gets tested.
It seems more like the devs at MS know their code works on Firefox but have been asked by exec to push chromium(-esque) because edge is now webkit.
sidenote: this is a multi-billion $ company, no excuse to ignore any platform with their capacity, front face it looks like they can't build a good app anymore, especially if it works anyway with a simple string change in the browser - heck, web devs had to factor in ie7-8 polyfills built by the community only a few years ago. no excuse.
I recall that the advice given to web developers for a long time was to query browser capabilities instead of relying on a user agent string. If this site is indeed relying on the user agent string, I don’t get why larger companies which probably have better capable teams resort to this.
Works for me(tm). No, really - I just navigated to the page with Firefox 103 on Wind10/64 and just got a normal website for the editor, with download links, videos, etc. Nothing about me needing to use a chrome based browser. Maybe they changed this?
Not supporting Safari is understandable for personal/toy project because you can't as easily test Safari without buying some Apple kit – whereas I can run Firefox, Chromium based browsers, and so forth, on my existing PCs and phones, in VMs if I want to check different OSs for odd differences.
Not good from though for, as in this case, something from MS.
And I don't block Safari, I just consider it a third class citizen when it comes to what little time I have to give for support.
I went down the rabbit hole of trying to connect to iOS Safari’s web inspector from my Linux machine last week. From the trail of activity on GitHub it looks like it might have been possible during about 2015–2020 but the open source adapter has since been effectively abandoned, with too few people doing the necessary ongoing maintenance. I spent a while trying to do it myself but it requires a deeper understanding of WebKit and Chromium internals than I possess.
I used this software (the app version) a couple weeks ago for the first time. I grabbed a great clip while playing a game and wanted to show it to a friend, but I didn't want to send the full 500MB 60s video when the clip was only ~6 seconds. I didn't want to spend a ton of time downloading proper editing software so I gave it a shot. It's a little clunky if I'm honest, it feels like an evolution of Windows Movie Maker; it works in a pinch, just don't expect anything professional to come out of it.
I usually use the Xbox app that's probably preinstalled on your Windows computer anyway; it's built to integrate with the game bar and can cut videos quite easily.
For this reason, and the fact that Windows already ships a clip editor, I'm not sure what Microsoft is planning to do with this. Maybe they'll replace the built in editor at some point?
i have similar use cases, avidemux is a small free program and it excels in this trimming scenario. if you dont change video output settings (copy) it will trim in a few seconds, no rendering or transcoding
For people who don't want to sign up but still like the idea of a video editor running in a browser (that doesn't upload anything), I am working on an alternative:
Feels like we're burying the lede here focusing on firefox/chrome or having to login when it's really damned impressive that you have an entire video editor in the browser.
So it seems like codec support allows viewing individual frames, and you've got some kind of ffmpeg script, and some kind of totally canvas based ui. There's a lot of cool tech in here showing some really interesting possibilities. Congrats on that!
What kind of ui library are you using for this btw?
I've built the UI library myself, it's written in C++ and is drawing with OpenGL. (translated to WebGL by emscripten) Javascript is only used for the browser-related parts.
The point of this is that the javascript layer can be easily replaced and the project built for other platforms. (for example it runs on iOS natively: https://apple.co/3QVAYAq)
Stuff like that and late AV1[0] are one reason I moved to Edge after 19 years on Firefox. More so just that I was impressed with Edge when I tried it. Brave also stood out to me when I tested every browser. It’s fast but has the distinction of being the only semi-major browser that’s fully open source other than Firefox. Edge is still very good, I would say it’s the best browser going but I’d be tarred and feathered for that.
I think using Chrome or Edge for PWAs and Firefox for general browsing is an acceptable compromise. I don't need to use the same program for video editing and reading news articles etc, although it would be nice if I could.
For the technologist that wants that single program, and values privacy and transparency like most of us do, Brave fits the bill nicely. It’s currently my second favorite browser after Edge.
That said, I had Clipchamp installed from the MS Store before I went back to MS Video Editor.
As I understand it, Web Codecs is quite a ways away from being a web standard - it is currently just a draft[1] for a recommendation for a possible future standard.
Just beware of any major API changes or any indication that it might be dropped in its entirety!
I use a WebAssembly build of FFmpeg to extract the streams and packets from the video files and as a fallback for some codecs. But most of the decoding/encoding is done with WebCodecs which in most cases has access to hardware acceleration so can be much faster than ffmpeg.
Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time. Is it still under development?
Back in my teens I was really wanting to get into 3D animation and virtualdub was one of the first tools I used to create reels since the free modeling and rigging tool I used at the time didn’t have any editing capabilities.
It seems that not very much, but this is a lot of the case of finished software: it's good for its job. The author is not gone though, there is a blog post from a year ago.
Does it in the app? Microsoft Store does have that dark pattern of looking like it wants you to sign in but then downloading the application anyway when you press cancel.
Edit: Oh wow it is a packaged "web-app". I see. That's unfortunate.
i use windows movie maker. It still exists, you can download it as binary and it's a pretty quick video editor with lots of options. I was unable to figure out the new win10 editor or chipchamp
As someone who has also worked on an in-browser video editor before, I do tip my hat to the developers working on Clipchamp. I think it's one of the better implemented products in this space considering that the memory-intensive process of encoding videos has not traditionally scaled very well into the browser. That being said, I'll probably still be sticking to something like iMovie or Resolve for more basic video editing since native NLEs are still way more performant overall (and they're free to use).
I’ve used this but the existing Microsoft video editor is better. I even set up an account and everything for Clip champ. It may be better for short videos, clips. But in general I feel like Microsoft is existing free video editor is the way to go. I use it a lot.
One huge difference between the two is that Clip champ is very slow in encoding your videos. Microsoft video editor will use all your cores or GPU acceleration. Whichever you prefer. I’ve noticed I get better results with CPU encoding. But Clip champ doesn’t even offer that and it’s very slow.
I have a very, very slow connection particularly for upload. Releasing a desktop "app" which wraps a website for video editing of all things... Feels like a spit in the face.
I ditched Clipchamp in favour of Flixier. It is 10 times better. It is usable on other platforms, allows both video and audio processing (including features missing on Clipchamp, like audio eq and green screen processing).
I am no associated with Flixier in any form but a customer.
anybody used this? i still have found 0 software that beats the ease of use, discoverability, simplicity, power and overall ux of Capcut and that's mobile. tbh i'd prefer desktop if i could find it so this could be cool.
There's also a nice and light video editor built-into Windows Photos app (which is now prompting to install Clipchamp). It's pretty good for short clips.
I have been wondering for years I'd this product is ffmpeg transpiled into JavaScript so it can run in the browser. It feels like there might be a nice open source opportunity here if so, although I imagine they've spent most of the last few years dealing with all the edge cases that make this work.
The name probably comes from Twitch culture, the idea of a “clipchamp” being someone who cut a clip of a stream in just the right way (often intentionally cutting out context to make a moment more funny). The opposite is a “clipchimp”, when a clip is cut poorly.
It says ‘for Windows PC’ quite prominently right throughout its copy on the landing page. Does no one else see that? Or have a missed a web option hiding on the page?
Edit: The link is for some reason pointing to the PC version. Anyway, I tried it on MacOS Chrome, but it says my browser is unsupported (and to get Chrome or Edge... ?)
And when that screenshot was taken, it did not actually finish downloading all the adware yet. Normally at the end of a (non-business) Windows install you have around 6 adware programs, depending on the region. Disney+, multiple "games", etc.
They just completely stopped caring and anyone who has an idea for a quick buck or markering stunt seems to be allowed to put their shit into Windows or slap the Microsoft logo on it.
Paid tier includes "free" access to their stock (Storyblocks) media. It is somewhat cheaper to get a Storyblocks video subscription through Clipchamp than through Storyblocks themselves.
I presume at some point 4K will be added, but given that YouTube metrics show that 4k media is still very niche (1080p is something like 85% of viewing), I can see why that might not be top of mind for this.
The first review on the Microsoft Store should be featured on the home page:
"Found this during a search for the word "clip." The app's description is dishonest, to say the least. This is not an app. It's a wrapper for an unidentified website. As soon as I opened the "app", it asked for personally identifiable information. The wrapper makes impossible to verify the site's digital certificate. It was suspicious, to say the least. The description says it is a Microsoft product, but don't fall for it. In the past, malicious apps under false identity has slipped into the Store. Either it is not a Microsoft app or Microsoft has fallen shockingly low."
Is clippy necessarily evil? I mean we have the floating action button in some apps, clippy just provided FAB like functionality with some personality.
Then again, the FAB is pretty horrendous too most of the time, so maybe it's not the best way.
But I think in some very limited cases it could be a good way to provide shortcuts that bypass huge stacks of menus. Modern apps have gone in a more lightweight direction though so maybe we just don't need that.
When people call Clippy evil, it's not because of his role as an assistant for Microsoft products. Rather, they're referring to his later actions in running several cryptocurrency pump and dump schemes.
Davinci Resolve is $300 and OpenShotnis probably disorienting for a lot of new entry users.
Clipchamp seems easy enough for most amateurs. It’s great to have a completely free watermark-free alternative from Microsoft. Of course it can’t provide all the features.
It looks like your browser is not supported To use Clipchamp, make sure you're using the latest version of Google Chrome, or the latest Microsoft Edge