Re: R: NEW: Issue #1544

Tina Holmboe wrote:

>  This comes as a surprise to me. I've not seen EMBED mentioned in
>  HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, XHTML 1.1; nor even in HTML 2.0, 3.0 or 3.2.
>
>  There *is* no EMBED element in ANY official HTML version - not to my
>  knowledge. That knowledge may be flawed.
>  
>

Er. Sorry to be unclear. I meant to say that embed is still _in use_ in 
those languages, irrespective of whether it's in the spec.

>  Well, "Until User-agents handle OBJECT, allow EMBED." - they do,
>  today, handle OBJECT. Those that do not should be as deprecated as the
>  above checkpoint.
>
>  I seem to recall that much ado was made of back-to-top links, and the
>  fact that any UA not supporting that was really broken. Well, any UA
>  not supporting OBJECT *is* really broken - it's not as if its a new
>  part of HTML.
>  
>

Nearly every implementation of <object> is broken, especially when it 
comes to handling cascading objects.

>>The <object> and <embed> elements have been used together for quite
>>some time to deal with Microsoft/Netscape conflicts. It seems that's
>>a reasonable approach today. If a custom DTD is necessary, that might
>>    
>>
>
>  Graceful degradation is the reasonable approach today, as it was
>  yesterday. Accessibility does NOT mean that everybody and his
>  mother-in-law absolutely MUST see the Flash; but that everybody
>  without exception should be able to get to the information contained
>  in it.
>  
>

Accessibility also doesn't necessarily mean that when it's a question of 
HTML vs. any other format, HTML wins. If the information in a Flash 
object can be made directly accessible, without damaging anything around 
it, I can't see why that shouldn't be explicitly allowed.

Embed exists, and is well-supported by every browser. It seems quixotic 
to try to ban it for validity's sake. Would somebody like to test a 
custom DTD with the browsers and ATs out there to make sure Flash 
remains directly accessible?

-
m

Received on Friday, 12 August 2005 21:46:09 UTC