Guidelines for EMBED element?

This message relates to a practical issue facing Web site
developers who wish to use Netscape plugins. Netscape
Communicator supports the OBJECT element, but earlier
releases only support the Netscape EMBED element.

I note that many sites are using EMBED and will continue
to do so while there are significant numbers of people
using Navigator 2.0 and 3.0.

A quick test shows that Lynx doesn't recognize an alt
attribute when it appears in EMBED elements.

It makes sense to me to recommend to Web site developers
to use alt and longdesc in EMBED elements to provide
fallbacks for browsers that can't render the plugin.

We should also recommend to the Lynx developers that
they add support for alt and longdesc to EMBED as well
as to IMG.

I realize that W3C's HTML 3.2 and 4.0 specifications
don't include EMBED, but consider that the widespread
use of this element demands a practical solution to
accessibility.

Shall we pass this advice to the guidelines group?

Regards,

-- Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org> http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett
phone: +44 122 578 2984 (or 2521) +44 385 320 444 (gsm mobile)
World Wide Web Consortium (on assignment from HP Labs)

Received on Thursday, 20 November 1997 07:15:57 UTC