Re: [whatwg] <video preload> implementation feedback

On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 00:57:29 +0200, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:

> On Wed, 9 May 2012, Simon Pieters wrote:
>> On Tue, 08 May 2012 18:59:29 +0200, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:
>> > On Thu, 18 Aug 2011, Philip Jägenstedt wrote:
>> > >
>> > > This is true, but as long as a few big browsers implement e.g.
>> > > preload="none" in a somewhat compatible way, it's hard to imagine
>> > > page authors not coming to depend on that behavior so that it
>> > > becomes required for web compat. It would be interesting to know if
>> > > there are counter-examples, any script-visible behavior that is
>> > > allowed to vary greatly between implementations without causing
>> > > scripts to break.
>> >
>> > Images aren't required to load at all. Scripts aren't required to run
>> > at all. The window size is allowed to be any dimension at all. CSS
>> > isn't required to be supported at all. Users are allowed to apply
>> > arbitrary user style sheets. Users are allowed to interact with form
>> > controls by using the keyboard or the mouse or any other input device.
>> >
>> > All of these do break some pages.
>>
>> That CSS is optional and that users are allowed to apply user style
>> sheets didn't stop you from specifying the Rendering section in great
>> detail.
>
> Optional detail. UAs aren't required to follow that section.
>
>
>> Making <video> behavior underdefined just because users should be able
>> to disable video loading in preferences just means that in a few years
>> the behavior of the market leader needs to be reverse engineered and
>> implemented by everyone else.
>
> I do not understand how this particular feature could end up in that
> state any more than the other features I list above.

It's not more. But it still is. Even though images aren't required to load  
at all, you still recently changed the way they load to be compatible  
(http://html5.org/r/7128 ). We should also specify how videos load to be  
compatible. We can do it now and get everyone to align on a good behavior,  
or we can wait and do it in a few years when Web content relies on what  
the market leader does, whether that's good or bad behavior.

-- 
Simon Pieters
Opera Software

Received on Thursday, 14 June 2012 07:39:14 UTC