Re: [whatwg] video element not ready for prime time

<0BF39F53-5669-4EE5-822A-CE14650D60AD@iqmultimedia.com.au>

Current votes: None.

On 13/01/2012, at 4:46 AM, Francis Boumphrey wrote:

> Firstly if I use a video with the src attribute
>=20
> e.g. <video src=3D'myvideo.mp4' controls>
>=20
> and my user agent does not support the format, all I get (in my versions =
of
> Opera and Firefox) is a blank screen. No message (as I would get with
> <embed>) and as far as I can see there is no way for me as an author to
> know that the video is not being played so I cannot code a 'write around'=
.

I brought up this same concern in Dec 2009 and Hixie seemed to concur:

On 9/02/2010, Ian Hickson wrote:

> Indeed, if we can't get a common codec, the spec as written today is not=
=20
> a particularly good design. If we really can't solve this problem, then=20
> we'll have to introduce a declarative way of saying "if you can't play an=
y=20
> of the videos, here's what I want you to do instead" -- but hopefully we=
=20
> won't have to go there.

(see http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2010-February/0250=
28.html)

I'd argue that while we did receive in WebM "a common codec" it does not en=
joy the sort of universal adoption required to be able to mandate its suppo=
rt in the spec, so on that logic, I think establishing a declarative fallba=
ck mechanism is probably required to prevent a situation where you cannot w=
rite a robust HTML5 page with video and without resorting to JS.

=97Kit Grose=