The VideoLAN development team is working on a new browser version of VLC based on WebAssembly and JavaScript, which will make it possible to watch movies from a web page. The team will also release VLC 4.0 this year.
According to Jean-Baptiste Kempf, the chairman of the VideoLAN foundation, VLC for the web is not finished yet, but significant progress has been made. He tells Protocol that the browser version basically embraces the running of VLC in a web page and allows users to play any supported video file in a browser.
VLC already had a plug-in to run in browsers, but it was based on the now no longer supported Flash. The new variant has been developed on the basis of WebAssembly and JavaScript. WebAssembly is an open W3C standard by virtually all popular browsers supported and is designed to run applications on web pages without plug-invereiste.
Kempf also reports that version 4.0 of VLC will be released this year. This version includes a changed interface compared to the current VLC version. According to the chairman, VideoLAN makes it possible to integrate more online content from third parties into the video player via extensions. According to Protocol, he left the door open for supporting videos with advertisements.
Finally, the chairman announced that security is high on the agenda and that sandboxing of VLC is being worked on, so that criminals cannot access the rest of a system via vulnerabilities in the video player.
According to Kempf, a video player is an important attack vector on a system, as people install fewer and fewer applications in addition to a browser, video player, PDF reader and photo application.
