Re: CSS2.1 'content', 404 Not Found, and audio files

On Wed, 4 Aug 2004 16:34:04 +0200, Chris Lilley <chris@w3.org> wrote:

> f> Claudio also wants to know what happens if one embeds an audio
> f> file in a visual display.
>
> f>    body:before { content: url(welcome-fanfare.mid); }
>
> The audio would play,presumably, but the timing could not be constrained
> because in visual media the entire content is displayed at once and
> serialization happens when the person reading  it scans it with their
> eyes.

This issue actually will become more delicate in CSS3, and is not that  
urgent for CSS2.1: in case we are specifying an audio file as 'content' of  
an element, the UA should render both the contents of the element *and*  
the generated content (i.e., play the file)? There seems to be no hint  
about this in the specs. But this, as I said, will rather go to a CSS3  
thread.

For CSS2.1 one problem could be that a UA might have support for audio  
files even though it does not have support for the media type 'speech' nor  
'aural' - the case of an audio file in generated content applied to  
'screen' seems to be a border case - where is the line to be drawn? or:  
how should the 'screen' handle the sound file?

> This is in contrast to the aural media, which is serialized by the
> speech synthesizer; contrast
>
> h2:before { content: url(welcome-fanfare.mid); }
>
> h2 {cue-before: url(welcome-fanfare.mid); }
>
> In the latter case the fanfare willsound justbefore each h2 is read out.

Specifying 'content' :before h2 still is serialized by the speech  
synthesizer - it plays the audio file before reading the heading, exactly  
as the 'cue-before' example does: the latter method additonally allows you  
to add some aural "padding" around the header by means of the 'pause'  
property on h2, which comes before the element's contents but after the  
cue.

/claudio


-- 
[Quote]
"He is old". But she is wrong. It is not age; it is that a drop has  
fallen; another drop.
~~~ Virginia Woolf

Received on Wednesday, 4 August 2004 11:22:40 UTC