Re: Feature Strings

On 4/19/07, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 19 Apr 2007, Jeff Schiller wrote:
> >
> > I notice <video> says the same thing, though I think there is a slightly
> > incorrect statement in [2].  Shouldn't
> >
> > "Content may be provided inside the video element so that older Web
> > browsers, which do not support video, can display text to the user
> > informing them of how to access the video contents. User agents should
> > not show this fallback content to the user."
> >
> > be
> >
> > "Content may be provided inside the video element so that older Web
> > browsers, which do not support video, can display text to the user
> > informing them of how to access the video contents. User agents that
> > support the <video> element should not show this fallback content to the
> > user."
>
> User agents must support the <video> element as part of supporting the
> spec, so it makes no sense to have a requirement that is predicated on
> them _not_ impementing the spec. (It's like having laws that only apply to
> people who are going to break the law -- if they're ignoring one law,
> there's no reason to believe they'll pay any attention to another.)
>

I was just suggesting to make the last sentence a little clearer
because in the previous sentence of that paragraph you refer to "older
Web browsers".  But I get your point.

Another suggested re-wording might be:

"Content may be provided inside the video element.  User agents should
not show this content to the user.  The contents of the video element
are provided as fallback content so that older Web browsers, which do
not support video, can display text to the user informing them of how
to access the video contents. "



> > I think the fallback content mechanism within WHATWG HTML5 makes
> > perfect sense as long as older user agents would automatically display
> > the fallback content (which I'm assuming that has already been
> > verified given the overall philosphy of the WHATWG HTML5 document).
> > Given that, I don't see <switch> as necessary.
>
> What is <switch>? Do you mean the SVG element?
>

Yes, this email thread began with a question on how people feel about
SVG <switch> and feature strings (in the vein of "maybe we should also
have them in HTML5").  However, after looking over <video> and
<canvas> in WHATWG's doc and seeing that they have a fallback
mechanism, I no longer think having a <switch> mechanism is necessary.

Regards,
Jeff

Received on Thursday, 19 April 2007 21:47:28 UTC