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January 21, 2013

gUM on Firefox Aurora -- First API Component of WebRTC


You’ve got some gUM on your computer. No, don’t try to clean it, that’s a good thing – gUM in this case stands for getUserMedia, and is now enabled by default in Firefox Aurora 20. That means you can capture local camera and microphone streams directly, with no third party plugins required.

gUM is the first API component of WebRTC, making this yet another step toward its growth. While PeerConnection and DataChannels aren’t at the point where they can be enabled by default, it’s only a matter of time until they reach that point.

As the W3C has yet to finalize the gUM API standard, the gUM used for Firefox is referred to as MoxGetUserData, so anyone using another kind of browser, such as Chrome, will have to adjust accordingly. Once the standard is complete, however, we can look forward to easy recording directly directly from nearly any browser.

There are other nice changes to Firefox, such as adjustments to private browsing to activate it on a per-tab or per-window basis. There’s also the ability to close a frozen plugin without affecting the tab itself, and improvements to page load time, download management and shutting down the browser. Also included is the CSS3 Flexbox, which is enabled by default, along with a new JavaScript profiler. There are various other improvements here and there, but the main focus is gUM, and what it means for WebRTC.

If you want an example of how the gUM API works, you can test it out here, and see how easy it is. Demonstrations of PeerConnection and DataChannels can also be tested out in Nightly or Aurora 20 in the media.peerconnection.enabled preferences from the configuration menu. This stands as yet another example of all the things that WebRTC can bring to the table, making it easier than ever to capture, save, replay, and upload user media.



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