Re: an interoperable object (fallback and context menus)

Hi Boris,

On Mar 12, 2009, at 7:56 PM, Boris Zbarsky wrote:

> Robert J Burns wrote:
>> The next step then is also to make it so embedding anything (or at  
>> least video, audio, or still image) is as easy to do as <object  
>> data='resource' >alternate content</object>.
> ...
>> Firefox actually got worse with 3.0 (note these tests/ 
>> demonstrations are not anywhere as clear as Leif's, but they are  
>> helpful nonetheless).
>
> Note that there's no way your example above could work with Firefox  
> before 3.0, in general.  <object> support was pretty much completely  
> rewritten between Firefox 2 and Firefox 3.
>
> That said,
>
>> <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2008Aug/att-0019/testObjectHTML.html#smallgif 
>> > <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2007Aug/att-0027/TestObject.html 
>> >
>
> I don't see any obvious problems here with Firefox 3 other than the  
> known issue with NPAPI not being able to hand back intrinsic size  
> information, so that objects that need to be handled by a plug-in  
> (e.g. the Flash video) need the size explicitly set.  This was also  
> the case in Firefox 2, of course.  Are there any details anywhere  
> about the exact way that things for "worse" with Firefox 3?   
> Whatever the problem is, I'd like to fix it.

I don't have firefox 2.0 handy/installed anymore, so I'm only speaking  
from memory. I think with 2.0, firefox behaved more like IE8 does now  
(and Opera, and WebKit  too) in that it provided some default non-zero  
dimensions for the embedded content. Fireforx 3.0 behaves more like  
prior iE versions behaved in assuming the dimensions of video should  
be zero and that no controls should be provided for temporal based  
content (video and audio) without author provided dimensions.

If you compare to these other browsers (especially with the second  
link that works around some WebKit related bugs) you'll see that  
Firefox fails to display the video nor does it produce any user  
controls for the audio or video. If plugins are limited to NSAPI ,  
then I can understand how you cannot necessarily communicate inherent  
dimensions of media between plugin and browser, however there's no  
reason to assume zero height and width and provide no temporal  
controls to users.

Also, perhaps we should consider addressing the plugin api problems  
though incubating a new plugin architecture. While this sounds far  
removed from HTML, it is not that far removed from many of the other  
norms addressed by the current draft.

Take care,
Rob

Received on Friday, 13 March 2009 01:20:01 UTC