Re: handling fallback content for still images

Robert Burns wrote:

> Aside from <picture> (and <video>, <audio>, <canvas>, etc).. it would 
> really be good to get UAs to properly support <object> with no scrollers 
> and no need for <param> and other superfluous markup.

Strangely enough, I was thinking exactly the opposite,
and wondering whether Microsoft might be persuaded
to migrate their horrific ?Active-X? strings from
the opening <object> tag to an nested <param>.
This would actually allow each browser vendor to
implement the basic functionality of <object> in
a completely consistent way whilst at the same time
allowing each to exploit platform-specific hooks
through a platform/browser specific <param>.  For
Microsoft IE, this might read (for example)

	<object data="http://www.sarahsnotecards.com/catalunyalive/diables.mov"
		width="320" height="256">
	  <param name="msie:classid" value="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B"
	  <param name="msie:codebase" value="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab"
	  <param name="msie:controller" value="true" />
	  <param name="msie:autoplay" value="false" />
	</object>

rather than the present execrable

	<object classid="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B"
	    codebase="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab"
		width="320" height="256">
	  <param name="src" value="http://www.sarahsnotecards.com/catalunyalive/diables.mov" />
	  <param name="controller" value="true" />
	  <param name="autoplay" value="false" />
	</object>

Philip Taylor