Re: Public feedback on HTML5 video

On Mon, 28 Dec 2009 13:09:57 +0100, Scheppe, Kai-Dietrich  
<k.scheppe@telekom.de> wrote:

> Hi Aryeh,
>
> I understand your points, even though I have different opinions on some  
> of them :-)
>
> implicit vs. explicit
> ---------------------
> However, please keep in mind that I was primarily making a point of  
> implicit vs. explicit instructions.
> If I tell the browser to do something, explicitly, then I expect  
> precicely that to happen.
> If however I say nothing, leaving it up to the browser to decide,  
> introduces ambiguity.
> As such I think it would be good to define what it means, should an  
> author remain silent on a given choice.
>
> buffering and bandwidth
> -----------------------
> As for buffering I agree that it would be wasteful to buffer everything,  
> if it is not used.
> Arguing in extremes may seem easy and clear, but is equivalent of  
> looking only the tails of a bell curve.
> The majority of cases usually lies somewhere in between and tends to  
> represent the more difficult path :-)
>
> Thus I find it preferable to enable the author to decide which video  
> ought to be buffered and which not.
> I especially mention that, and also the issue of bandwidth, for the  
> cases you refer to
>  - mobile users and developing countries.
>
> It is the authors who know what's best for their audience, within their  
> given context.
> In the end, however, it is up to the user to decide if they like the  
> content or not.
> If authors make the wrong choices, users will vote with a click :-)
>
> As such, enabling authors by giving choices and producing predictable  
> results is, to me, preferable to not doing so.

Do you have a concrete suggestion on what the behavior should be and how  
to control it? It seems to me that none of the options are really good.  
Assuming a page with 100s of <video>s with poster images, downloading even  
just enough to get the duration might add up to a significant amount of  
data (and time), while not downloading anything and pretending that the  
duration is +Inf and dimensions unknown is likely to cause headaches for  
authors that actually use that data in their scripts before playing.

In either case, the poster image doesn't seem very useful if it doesn't  
allow authors to save bandwidth and/or display the page faster, none of  
which seem to be true in current implementations. I would like the  
presence of poster to allow browsers to not even try downloading any data  
(and the spec allows it), but am not sure this is what authors would want  
in all cases.

-- 
Philip Jägenstedt
Core Developer
Opera Software

Received on Monday, 28 December 2009 12:32:53 UTC