- From: Ben Boyle <benjamins.boyle@gmail.com>
- Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 01:30:12 +1000
- To: "Karl Dubost" <karl@w3.org>
- Cc: "Ian Hickson" <ian@hixie.ch>, "Robert Burns" <rob@robburns.com>, "HTMLWG WG" <public-html@w3.org>
Thanks Karl, I found this very useful background. I wonder if it might be useful referenced from the design principles, perhaps relevant to "avoid needless complexity", or maybe "separation of concerns"? http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/html5/html-design-principles/Overview.html#avoid-needless-complexity Maybe even a statement in there that we prefer not to overload elements? Is that our stance? On 7/4/07, Karl Dubost <karl@w3.org> wrote: > > > Le 3 juil. 2007 à 10:04, Ian Hickson a écrit : > > (Part of the reason <object> is so poorly > > implemented is that it is so overloaded with different behaviours, a > > lesson that I've tried to apply to all the new features in HTML5.) > > Do we have a resource which lists all the interoperability problems > of object element among user agents? I see many claims of > interoperability problems, but not that much actual tests, and > reported and explained issues to back up the assertions. That would > be cool to collect more data on this issue. > > If you have resources please add them to > http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/ObjectElement > > > We had done a [few tests][1] (far to be enough) in the past but it > might be worthwhile to compile all the troubles. It would certainly > help browsers vendors and others to fix object in a next release. > > [1]: http://esw.w3.org/topic/ObjectTestResults > [2]: http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/#the-object > > > For reference > http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2007-March/ > 010282.html > > ON HANDLING OTHER MEDIA FORMATS: > > A lot of feedback concerned the necessity of introducing an > element specifically for <video> in the first place. > > We could use <object> for this, adding multiple APIs to <object> > for each kind of media file, defining the semantics for changing > from one to the other, for content-negotiation, for > disambiguating similar media types that have overlapping but not > identical APIs, and so forth. > > However, the browser vendors would hate us. Browser vendors have > repeatedly and loudly stated that overloading elements leads to > implementation difficulties, resulting in poor interoperability, > edge cases with strange behaviour, security bugs, and the works. > Good examples of this in existing HTML browsers are <object> and > <input>, both of which have had huge interoperability problems > over the years, and both of which still have big issues. When it > takes more than 10 years to get an element implemented well in > every single browser that has tried to implement it, you have to > look at why that is, and you have to learn from the mistake. In > this case, the mistake is adding too much functionality to one > element. > > Similarly, for backwards-compatibility reasons, adding anything > to <object> is a nightmare. We'd have to carefully examine every > addition to make sure it didn't clash with existing content, for > instance. > > Furthermore, overloading an element with various APIs results in > difficulties for authors. An author dealing with audio doesn't > want to think about aspect ratios, and an author dealing with > video doesn't want to think about plugin parameters. > > This doesn't mean we have to specify everything as its own > element. There are media types that it doesn't make sense to > support with a specific element (at least not yet); we don't want > to have six dozen elements with each type having its own set of > features (and bugs). We _do_ have a generic element, <object>, > which does work for generic inclusion. It doesn't support > media-specific features (like the Video API) but it works as a > stop-gap until the media in question is important enough to > deserve special treatment, if that happens. > > > > -- [whatwg] <video> element feedback > http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2007-March/ > 010282.html > Sun, 01 Apr 2007 02:26:35 GMT > > > > -- > Karl Dubost - http://www.w3.org/People/karl/ > W3C Conformance Manager, QA Activity Lead > QA Weblog - http://www.w3.org/QA/ > *** Be Strict To Be Cool *** > > > > >
Received on Thursday, 5 July 2007 15:30:18 UTC