Re: OBJECT's type attribute in 4.01

I guess I see where the choice of the precedence is coming from.  Can't say 
that I agree that the assumption the author and the server admin are 
working in coordination is a valid one.  It may be in a perfect world, but 
alas... try getting AOL or the RoadRunner to change the mime type on their 
servers.  You'd be lucky if you get them to do it in a month, if at all.

Anyway, now I have a follow up question, assuming the new precedence order 
(and assuming IE and NS will change to confirm in a very near future).

I used to assign different mime types to the EMBED (read OBJECT) tag to 
control what plugin will be used to render a particular media type and in 
what order.

Example: MP3s can be rendered using Microsoft's Media Player, Apple's 
Quicktime 4.0 plugin, any other MP3 capable plugin.  It's not unreasonable 
to assume that many users will have at least Media Player and Quicktime 
installed and fighting for the chance to render an MP3 file.

Why is it important to know which plugin is used?  Let's say that I need to 
control the playback with JavaScript or by any other means.  In fact, let's 
say I'd prefer to use the Media Player because it's easier to control with 
JavaScript.  But if the Media Player is not available, I'm willing to scale 
back to Quicktime.  If there is no Quicktime, let the browser render the 
file with whatever's available.

The way I used to do it is the following (this is a simplified example):
    <embed ... type="application/x-mplayer2">
       <embed ... type="application/quicktime">
          <embed ... type="audio/mpeg">
             <a href="..." type="audio/mpeg">MP3 file</a>
          </embed>
       </embed>
    </embed>

[please don't take this example literally, but rather as an idea for what 
I'd like to do.]

So here's the question, what is the preferred way of achieving the same 
effect using HTML 4.01?  I don't think it's possible.


Regards
Dmitry Beransky

At 09:14 AM 8/30/99 , Nir Dagan wrote:
>The situation described below by Dmitry Beransky assumes that the HTML author
>and the HTTP server administrator work against each other.
>The specifications (HTML and HTTP) assume, what is more reasonable,
>that they work in coordination.

Received on Tuesday, 31 August 1999 04:26:32 UTC