- From: Håkon Wium Lie <howcome@opera.com>
- Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2007 11:06:53 +0100
Also sprach Laurens Holst:
> > http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#video
> Correct me if I$,1ry(Bm wrong, but I don$,1ry(Bt think there is a single reason why
> the browser couldn$,1ry(Bt play back content embedded with an <object> tag,
> like it$,1ry(Bs supposed to. What$,1ry(Bs more, that would allow it to work with
> existing web content, too. Plus it$,1ry(Bs backwards compatible.
There are two main reasons for using <video> instead of <object>. The
first is that <object> is broken in the sense that its interoperbility
score is low. People have been trying to fix it ever since it was
created, but their efforts are unlikely to succeed.
The second is that 'video' is a much better name for video content
than 'object' or 'embed'; it's intuitive and semantic. 'object' may
have a minimalistic charm, but if you know something is video (or
audio, or ...) it's easier to give it a video (or audio ...) icon, or
not download it if the browser doesn't have video capabilities. Also,
it can more easily be styled. For example:
video { display: none }
If we opted for generic names, we could write our web paged only using
<div> elements for headlines and paragraphs. Having <h1>, <h2>, <p>,
<blockquote> etc. enables us to do interesting stuff with the content;
styling it, searching it, adding sematics.
There is a cost associated with creating new elements. It shouldn't be
done easily. I believe <video> and <audio> have proven themselves
worthy, though.
-h&kon
H,Ae(Bkon Wium Lie CTO ,A0~(Be,A.*(B
howcome at opera.com http://people.opera.com/howcome
Received on Friday, 16 March 2007 03:06:53 UTC