[Bug 8731] Consider expanding buffering control for media elements

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=8731





--- Comment #17 from Ian 'Hixie' Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>  2010-02-18 04:36:42 ---
The idea of calling it loadhint="" was to emphasise that it's just a hint, but
I guess many attributes are just hints and we haven't called any of them
"hint". It's caused some confusion, but possibly no more than would be caused
by having the attribute be confusingly named.

On the topic of autoplay vs this attribute, I really think the two aren't
orthogonal. It really makes no sense to play without buffering, so the entire
attribute is moot if we're autoplaying. Generally, that, to me, signals that it
really should be the same attribute.

I'm not a fan of "playthrough"; it's likely to be the most-used value and I
think it should have an easier name. I like "autobuffer" because it _is_ more
"automatic" than the other values, in that it's telling the user agent to Do
The Right Thing. I'm ok with just preload=buffer or something else simple like
that if people think that "autobuffer" is that bad. (Similarly, preload=play
might be ok if preload=autoplay strikes people as too wordy or confusing...
personally I think autoplay makes sense since it makes it clear that something
is going to happen. preload=play doesn't seem quite as obvious.)

So I thinking of the following proposal:

   preload=none
   preload=metadata
   preload=autobuffer
   preload=autoplay

(with the default being user-agent defined)

In reply to comment 16:
> How does the user get the choice? Would the browser vendor that cares about
> this offer such a difference as a browser preference? Or should "stop
> buffering" be an option in the video controls? Or the context menu?

I think the spec should mention all of these choices as valid implementation
choices.


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Received on Thursday, 18 February 2010 04:36:45 UTC