width='' and height='' on <video>

Regarding IRC logs from yesterday:

The <video> element currently lacks width and height attributes on  
the grounds that:
  1) They'd be presentational.
  2) YouTube and the like put all videos in the same box.
  3) Different dimensions are called for different media, so the  
<div><style scoped media='...'> video { width: ...; height: ...; } </ 
style><style scoped media='...'> video { width: ...; height: ...; } </ 
style><video>...</video></div> would encourage media-independence  
while <video width='...' height='...'>...</video> would not.

And, yet, for *practical* purposes, authors seem to *expect* to have  
width and height attributes at their disposal. (Based on expectations  
voiced on IRC.) I suggest adding width and height attributes to <video>.

My take on the three reasons against is:
  1) I care more about pragmatism than about a principled  
categorization to presentational and non-presentational. width and  
height attributes would be pragmatic.
  2) YouTube is free to take a one-size-fits-all approach, but other  
sites should be allowed to *easily* generate <video> elements whose  
rendering dimensions depend on the properties of the video content.
  3) The media independence argument sounds good in theory, but the  
above syntax example illustrates why it might not fly practically. On  
small screens, you probably want to allow the UA to take liberties  
with the element box sizing with video anyway. (That is, a small- 
screen UA should take width/height as aspect ratio advice and fit a  
rectangle with that aspect ratio to the viewport size.)

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Received on Wednesday, 10 October 2007 08:53:13 UTC