- From: Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>
- Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 04:03:17 -0600
- To: John Foliot <jfoliot@stanford.edu>
- Cc: "Edward O'Connor" <hober0@gmail.com>, HTMLwg <public-html@w3.org>, Jeremy Keith <jeremy@adactio.com>
John Foliot wrote: > As one who advocates for the minority more often than not, I am somewhat > distressed when I read about the notion that the "author knows best" > (earlier in this thread). It has been my experience that this assertion is > false more often than it is true. I believe that Edward's suggestion here > is the best position, as it rightly gives the final determination to the end > user - who after all is the real client. User agents should be the final > arbitrators, and further it would be ideal if the auto-buffer (and > auto-start) options could be further modified by the end user as a UA > setting, which over-rides any of the 3 options Edward suggests in favor of a > declared preference by the end user. (For example, a deaf-blind user has > zero need for the bandwidth hogging of a video stream when all they want is > the associated text transcript; thus they could set their rig to never > auto-buffer, never auto-start). Agreed. Another example: not everyone worldwide has the availability of broadband, so dial-up is their only option. How do I know this? 56K dialup is the only internet connectivity at my residence. As a user I want to be able to control media. I want to know a video is there. And ideally be able to obtain a plain text transcript. The one thing that I do not want to happen is for the video to start loading automatically and grind everything to a crawl or halt. >From the draft Design Principles, "Priority of Constituencies": "In case of conflict, consider users over authors over implementors over specifiers over theoretical purity." http://www.w3.org/TR/html-design-principles/#priority-of-constituencies Best Regards, Laura On 12/28/09, John Foliot <jfoliot@stanford.edu> wrote: > Edward O'Connor wrote: >> >> Essentially, we have three things we'd like authors to be able to >> convey to the browser: >> 1. Do whatever the browser thinks best. >> 2. Please autobuffer. >> 3. Please *don't* autobuffer. >> >> And there are a few things we'd like to be able to say about whatever >> design we settle on: >> >> A. (1) above should be the default condition, so its syntax should be >> what most authors will do anyway (not provide attributes at all). > > <snipped> > >> ... I think >> autobuffer="" should probably become an enumerated attribute[1] instead >> of a boolean attribute. Something like the following: >> >> 1. Do whatever the browser thinks best. [no autobuffer attribute] >> 2. Please autobuffer. [autobuffer="on"] >> 3. Please *don't* autobuffer. [autobuffer="off"] > > As one who advocates for the minority more often than not, I am somewhat > distressed when I read about the notion that the "author knows best" > (earlier in this thread). It has been my experience that this assertion is > false more often than it is true. I believe that Edward's suggestion here > is the best position, as it rightly gives the final determination to the end > user - who after all is the real client. User agents should be the final > arbitrators, and further it would be ideal if the auto-buffer (and > auto-start) options could be further modified by the end user as a UA > setting, which over-rides any of the 3 options Edward suggests in favor of a > declared preference by the end user. (For example, a deaf-blind user has > zero need for the bandwidth hogging of a video stream when all they want is > the associated text transcript; thus they could set their rig to never > auto-buffer, never auto-start). > > I believe the old saw goes: "Author proposes, user disposes" > > My $0.02 Canadian > > JF -- Laura L. Carlson
Received on Tuesday, 29 December 2009 10:03:46 UTC