Mozilla and Quicktime 6

Steve has encountered some interesting wackyness regarding Mozilla MIME types and the new Quicktime 6 on Mac OSX. Apparently the new QT6 plugin takes over playing of Macromedia Flash 6 content:

what happens in a case such as mine where two plugins are capable of handling the same MIME type? Well, if multiple plug-ins are installed to handle a given content type, the one that "wins" is the one whose plug-in file in /Library/Internet Plugins comes first alphabetically. Users are empowered to take control of which plug-in they use by renaming their plugins.

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In related news, the new versions of Quicktime and Flash are now fully scriptable, which means a lot of the features that were once IE only are now available in Mozilla.

I haven't tried QT6 yet. It seems to become more and more bloated with each release, just like every other multimedia player.

» posted by pinder on July 19, 2002 at 02:10 PM

Comments

Somehow I don't think adding support for a newer flash, mpeg4/aac is the same kind of bloat that goes on with WiMP or Real.

# posted by THEM

I agree, the new technology in QT6 is cool, but for me, the "bloatware" designation comes from how it takes over file associations and adds shortcuts everywhere.

# posted by pinder

No, that's "annoyware".

# posted by Jubal Kessler

Doesn't those two always come bundled as a package anyways?

# posted by Liorean

What shortcuts/alias? I get an Application in /Applications and no changed file associations, in fact the plug-in's MIME types setup excluded handling Flash files. If you don't respect that I guess it is Quicktime's fault.

# posted by THEM

I think the first QT version whose plug-in supported flash was 4, so this is nothing new. There's a MIME type setup in the QuickTime prefs where you can turn off this behaviour.

# posted by Chucker

The post isn't directly in reference to anything QT or Flash do or don't do... The probably I was having was with the unintuitive way inwhich Mozilla controls MIME types.

In short, I just plain wasn't able to control the functionality of the plugins I do have without resorting to RENAMING those plugins for Mozilla's benefit. I am certain the average user will never investigate this issue far enough to find a proper solution. The easiest alternative for many would be to a) stick w/ IE or b) uninstall QT6.

That's a shame. I hope this problem is remedied in future versions of Mozilla, before it creates too many more conflicts.

# posted by Kris Hooper

Hold up! This QuickTime/Flash issue is only if QuickTime is installed after and MIME types aren't set. This is not new to v6.0; it was also there in v5.0.

# posted by Shark DaD

Actually, from what I read, the worst thing about QT6 is that if you bought a previous version of QuickTime Pro, you have to buy a *new* license key at full price.

This, among other reasons, is why I've held off on buying a license key so far. Heh.

# posted by codeman38

QuickTime does not, and never did, take over
the Flash file type (.swf) or MIME type, unless
the user specifically asks it to. It's possible
your registry and/or browser data is corrupt.

You can un-register QT6 (or 5, or 4) for Flash
files by clicking MIME types in QT Settings
control panel. Note that the default setting
is OFF.

BTW, the new $30 license for QT Pro gives you
the ability to create native MPEG-4 files, and
includes MPEG-4 video and AAC audio authoring
and compression. If the announcements from
DoCoMo and Apple are to be believed, it will
include some 3GP audio/video/text encoding
in a 6.x release as well. Worth $30? Can't
speak for you, but it sure works for me...

# posted by duke-of-url-url-url

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