Sorry, I should be more clear. I am not looking for trouble shooting regarding the <video> element. I know there is another mailing list for something like that. And I have indeed sent in a report to apple regarding the behavior I noticed.<br>
<br>
The point is that I think it should be made more clear in the spec about how to handle video it can't render or when it is unable to locate the resource (404 for example). I found this in the draft that says:<br><br>
"User agents that cannot render the video may instead make the
element <a href="http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#represents" title="represents" target="_blank">represent</a> a link to an
external video playback utility or to the video data itself." <br><br>But that seems fairly weak. Why not "should" or "must"?<br><br>"Content may be provided inside the video element. User agents should not show this content to the user; it is intended for older Web browsers which do not support video, so that legacy video plugins can be tried, or to show text to the users of these older browser informing them of how to access the video contents."<br>
<br>Could the language not be updated here to include showing fallback content (along side an alert) when video cannot be found or rendered?<br><br>Cheers<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 3:44 AM, Kristof Zelechovski <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:giecrilj@stegny.2a.pl" target="_blank">giecrilj@stegny.2a.pl</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div link="blue" vlink="blue" lang="PL">
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<p><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: navy;" lang="EN-US">What does the
specification say about video fallback?</span></font></p>
<p><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: navy;" lang="EN-US">Have you bugged Apple
about this?</span></font></p>
<p><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: navy;" lang="EN-US">(this mailing list is not
a general helpdesk)</span></font></p>
<p><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: navy;" lang="EN-US">Cheers,</span></font></p>
<p><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: navy;" lang="EN-US">Chris</span></font></p>
<p><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: navy;" lang="EN-US"> </span></font></p>
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<hr align="center" size="2" width="100%">
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<p><b><font face="Tahoma" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma; font-weight: bold;">From:</span></font></b><font face="Tahoma" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma;">
<a href="mailto:whatwg-bounces@lists.whatwg.org" target="_blank">whatwg-bounces@lists.whatwg.org</a> [mailto:<a href="mailto:whatwg-bounces@lists.whatwg.org" target="_blank">whatwg-bounces@lists.whatwg.org</a>] <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">On Behalf Of </span></b>Nathanael Ritz<br>
<b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Wednesday, March 18, 2009
6:59 AM<br>
<b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> <a href="mailto:whatwg@whatwg.org" target="_blank">whatwg@whatwg.org</a><br>
<b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> [whatwg] <video>
element error handling</span></font></p>
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<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Hi there,<br>
<br>
When I was playing around with the <video> element today I noticed my
browser didn't seem to handle errors in a way that was very useful.
Specifically, I am using the Safari 4 beta on Windows Vista. When I tried
putting the page together, my markup was coded in this way:<br>
<br>
<span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"><video src="firefox.ogv"
autoplay></span><embed id="VideoPlayback" <br>
src="<a href="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=8665396898313695852&hl=en&fs=true" target="_blank">http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=8665396898313695852&hl=en&fs=true</a>"
<br>
style="width:344px;height:285px;" allowFullScreen="true"
allowScriptAccess="always"<br>
type="application/x-shockwave-flash" /><span style="background: rgb(255, 255, 102) none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"></video></span><br>
<br>
I was trying to grab the video from the WHATWG demo page but I forgot that I
copied a relative link. So without knowing that the video would not work in the
first place, I tried opening up a valid HTML 5 page with this particular set of
markup. It didn't play. But not only did it not play, Safari refused to do
anything to tell me something was wrong. Instead I just saw a blank page.<br>
<br>
When I tried a random mp4 file, I got a green box, but no playback. When I
finally learned I was using a relative link and put in the full URI for the
firefox.ogv video, it still didn't work.<br>
<br>
My observation is that if it is not already recommended in the spec, browsers
should offer some sort of indication it could not use whatever file format it
was supplied or received something like a 404 from the server. Whether it's a
broken video box icon, or automatically reverting to the fallback content
within the <video> element (if it exists), I think there should be some
sort of warning or indication of a failure. <br>
<br>
What kind of error handling does the <video> element have?<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
<br>
Nathanael<br>
<br>
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