Re: Public feedback on HTML5 video

On Fri, Jan 1, 2010 at 12:44 PM, Boris Zbarsky <bzbarsky@mit.edu> wrote:
> On 12/31/09 8:34 PM, Silvia Pfeiffer wrote:
>>
>> Also, right now, with they way the spec is written, it's
>> not a bug, because it's spec conformant.
>
> Why?  Not all "correct" software behavior is required by specs, so not all
> bugs are bugs just because they're violations of a spec.
>
> For example, crashing is generally considered a bug, but is not prohibited
> by any specs in the usual case.

I don't think that's a fair comparison. "Not crashing" is not a
feature that is written into the HTML5 spec. But "autobuffer" is a
feature in the HTML5 spec.

> Using up all the user's memory: same thing (in fact, sometimes specs
> actually require it).
>
> I can understand the desire to have the spec make it clear that lack of
> autobuffer attribute means the author is requesting that the UA not
> autobuffer the content.

See, I don't subscribe to this. In my opinion there are three things
that the author should be able to specify:

1. I don't care about autobuffering and leave it to the browser
2. I know that autobuffering would be lethal in this situation and
therefore request the the UA not autobuffer
3. I know that autobuffering would be really useful in this situation
and therefore request the UA to autobuffer

That's why on/off/not specified makes sense to me from an *author*
POV. That *browsers* may decide to implement the same strategy for 1
and 2 is beside the point.

Regards,
Silvia.

Received on Friday, 1 January 2010 01:51:41 UTC