Re: media fragment URI use on web pages

On Thu, 04 Nov 2010 23:01:42 +0100, Silvia Pfeiffer  
<silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 9:21 PM, Philip Jägenstedt <philipj@opera.com>  
> wrote:
>> On Thu, 28 Oct 2010 02:13:07 +0200, Silvia Pfeiffer
>> <silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi guys,
>>>
>>> I've been wondering about how we can use media fragment URIs on Web
>>> page URLs such that the fragment is handed through to the correct
>>> media element. Existing schemes - such as YouTube's scheme of e.g.
>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhMoxXilwro#t=186 only work with a
>>> single video on a page.
>>>
>>> It might be an idea to suggest something like:
>>> http://example.com/page.html#video[0]&t=10,20
>>>
>>> Then it's possible to provide a URL with media fragments for multiple
>>> videos on a page:
>>> http://example.com/page.html#video[0]&t=10,20&video[1]&t=30,40 etc.
>>>
>>> or for all videos on the page:
>>> http://example.com/page.html#videos&t=10,20
>>>
>>> It would be nice if something like this (or nicer - improved
>>> suggestions welcome) becomes a scheme that everyone uses and that
>>> therefore the browsers can support.
>>>
>>> It's a scheme on a Web page (.html) rather than on a media resource
>>> (.ogv / .webm / .mp4) and as such not really something that this group
>>> was chartered for. But I believe we could add a note that recommends
>>> such use and would be a Web author recommendation, and that the HTML
>>> WG could eventually pick up as a browser recommendation.
>>
>> While this would be very useful, it's not something that can be  
>> standardized
>> in browsers. The URL page.html#t=1 already causes browsers to scroll to  
>> the
>> element with id="t=1". Overloading this behavior would most likely break
>> some pages. See
>> <http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/history.html#scroll-to-fragid>
>>
>> This is quite unfortunate, as far as I can see the best we can hope for  
>> is
>> page.html?t=1 with per-site server-side solutions or page.html#t=1 with
>> per-site JavaScript solutions (those sites would have to make sure to  
>> not
>> have id="t=1" on their pages, and live with not being able to use the
>> fragment for its usual purpose). Perhaps there's room for  
>> standardization
>> here, as long as it's clear that User Agents aren't involved.
>
> You misunderstand. I didn't want to suggest it for browsers, but for
> site developers. Over time, as people change their Websites to use
> such structured fragment URIs, we may be able to bring it into the
> browser, but I don't expect it to be before another 5-10 years. Some
> sites already use this kind of markup (see YouTube for example). It
> would be nice to recommend a common naming scheme for all sites. They
> don't have to follow, but more is done today by convention than by
> standardisation.
>
> Seems we missed that discussion at the F2F. :-)

OK, I'm glad that this isn't intended for browsers, then. I should stress  
that even in 5-10 years we can't really put this in browsers, it would  
cause the same breakage then as it would today.

-- 
Philip Jägenstedt
Core Developer
Opera Software

Received on Friday, 5 November 2010 09:05:49 UTC