Re: Public feedback on HTML5 video

On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 7:19 PM, Gavin Carothers <gavin@carothers.name> wrote:
> The corrected text which had already been released by the time I sent
> this to the list still contains the following:
>
> I think the HTML5 spec should be changed such that the value of the
> autobuffer attribute must be respected. And even if the spec is not
> changed, web browsers should not choose to ignore it. Web browsers
> should only buffer HTML5 media content when the autobuffer or autoplay
> attribute has been explicitly turned on in the markup.

That's still not good.  We should *not* require browsers to respect
the presence of autobuffer - they should certainly be free to not
autobuffer if they choose to.  Similarly, browsers should be *able* to
autobuffer even if the author doesn't put the attribute in, for
example if the user selects a "Please autobuffer video when possible"
option in their browser.

The only problem with the current situation is that the Webkit
browsers have a bad default behavior.  This is fairly obvious - it
renders pages unusable if there are a lot of videos or audios on the
same page.  Once they change this, and they say they will, it'll be
fine.

The autobuffer attribute should never be anything more than a
suggestion from the author.  The presence or lack of it should be
ignorable by the browsers whenever they find it appropriate.

~TJ

Received on Thursday, 24 December 2009 01:38:59 UTC