Yesterday, the Windows Media team and Port 25—Microsoft's Open Source Software Lab (OSSL)—released a Firefox add-on that ill give users the power to use Windows Media Player inside the popular browser.  The plug-in has Microsoft's endorsement, and according to OSSL's Hank Janssen, "It shows another level of interoperability and eagerness in working with the Community to get this released."

While Firefox is able to play most videos on the web, it does run into problems when sites require Windows Media Player.  Without the plug-in, web sites requiring a browser capable of loading Windows Media Player left Firefox users out in the cold, alerting them that they would need Internet Explorer to view the video.  To clarify, there are ways to play Windows Media content in Firefox, but this new add-on lets web surfers use Windows Media Player to view multimedia content.

The current add-on is available for download from Port 25 as an executable file.  It works with Windows XP SP2 (x86), Windows XP SP2 (x64), Windows Vista (x86), and Windows Vista (x64).  If you are using Firefox 2.0.0.3 with Vista, you'll need to run the installer once, let it fail, restart Firefox, and run the installer again.

BetaNews is reporting that Windows Media Player 10 will not work with the add-on, meaning that Windows Media Player 11 is required.