Re: Public feedback on HTML5 video

On Thu, 24 Dec 2009 12:47:36 +0100, Lachlan Hunt  
<lachlan.hunt@lachy.id.au> wrote:

> Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
>> 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.
>
> The problem as I see it is that because autobuffer is only a boolean  
> attribute, it's currently only possible for the author to suggest the  
> video should be autobuffered, but no clear way for the author to suggest  
> that it shouldn't.  i.e. When the attribute is present, the author  
> thinks autobuffering would be the optimal behaviour for users that can  
> handle it.  But when it is absent, the author has not provided any  
> indication either way and left it entirely up to the browser, perhaps  
> based on the user's own preferences or connection speed, or whatever.
>
> e.g. A browser being used on a dial up connection or slow public wifi  
> connection could detect that and opt not to autobuffer, whereas a user  
> on a high speed connection may opt to autobuffer whenever possible,  
> regardless.
>
> But the spec does not address the issue raised in John's post, whereby  
> the author may wish to help conserve server bandwidth by suggesting that  
> the video only be downloaded by those users who choose to watch it.
>
> John gave an example of a blog home page containing many articles, one  
> of which may contain a video.  But the reader may only be interested in  
> one of the articles which doesn't, so it doesn't make sense to waste the  
> bandwidth of either the server or user, and providing a way for an  
> author to indicate this would be useful.
>
> One way to address this would be to allow autobuffer to accept the  
> values "on" and "off", just like the autocomplete attribute.  Of course,  
> the browser should be free to ignore the attribute either way.

I don't see that the browser would ever behave differently for  
autobuffer="off" and if it attribute is missing altogether. Surely all  
browsers would do their best to conserve bandwidth regardless of the  
attribute?

-- 
Philip Jägenstedt
Core Developer
Opera Software

Received on Thursday, 24 December 2009 18:04:03 UTC