Re: Acessibility of <audio> and <video>

At 8:57  -0400 26/08/08, Boris Zbarsky wrote:
>Dave Singer wrote:
>>No, you're missing something.  You're assuming that the only 
>>pluggability is with <object>.  Nothing about the spec. stops 
>>browsers from
>>a) implementing their own plug-in model for video and audio source
>>b) looking for optional platforms such as VLC, MPEG4FF, QuickTime, and so on
>>c) asking one or more of those platforms, dynamically, what they can support
>
>No, I don't think I'm missing anything.  I'm just approaching this 
>as an author, not as a UA implementor.  As an author I would like to 
>be able to use <video> (because it's semantically cleaner than 
><object> and allows the user to select a UI they most prefer for 
>it),  but at the same time I don't want to have to sort out which 
>codecs UAs support or don't support, and I know every single UA has 
>Flash installed.
>
>So I want to be able to point to my video, with fallback to Flash if 
>the browser can't handle it.  Note that from an author's point of 
>view there is no difference between "UA doesn't support <video>" and 
>"UA doesn't support codec X".

Then I think you're either looking for a spec. change to say that the 
fallback content should be played if no source is acceptable, or for 
a browser extension to do that (and I'm not sure such an extension 
would be valid).  But see below...

>Or are you saying that I should point one of the <source>s to my swf 
>file and that it's the UA's responsibility to handle that situation 
>by delegating to the existing Flash plug-in?

That's one possibility.

>
>That seems to be a pretty serious burden on UAs, and in view of the 
>abovementioned "no difference from an author's point of view" I 
>question the need for that burden.
>
>><objects> have varying DOM interface, UI behavior, and so on. 
>>We're trying really hard to unify the support for multimedia here.
>
>Yes, I know what the goal is, thank you.  I just want, as an author, 
>to be able to use <video> without serious pain in the near future. 
>As a UA implementor, I suspect doing fallback to the content inside 
><video> is a lot simpler than doing something sane with the incoming 
>swf from a <source>.  But I could be wrong, of course.
>

But you do seem to be asking for the unification within the browser 
anyway, in that you want the interface to <video> to be unchanged no 
matter whether it used a <source> fellback to <object>.
-- 
David Singer
Apple/QuickTime

Received on Tuesday, 26 August 2008 23:12:20 UTC