[html5] <video> tag fallback

[Henri Sivonen]

On Apr 14, 2009, at 15:18, Steven Garrity wrote:

> We're working on implementing the <video> tag to play a Ogg Theora  
> video for a client. We're including a Flash playing in the "fallback  
> content" for Internet Explorer.

Have you considered and rejected using Java-based fallback in IE with  
the same Ogg file that you'll be serving to Firefox?
http://www.flumotion.net/cortado/

> We're running into trouble with the lack of a common format, though.  
> It seems the current behaviour in Safari is that if the video format  
> is not supported (Ogg Theora, for example), then the <video> player  
> is shown (empty) rather than the fall back content.
>
> Is this the intended/spec'ed behaviour when no video format playable  
> by the client is provided?

Yes, this is the specced/intended behavior.

> Please note that I know we can provide a Safari-playable video  
> format as well as a secondary source in the <video> tag. We'd like  
> to avoid having to add another (third, if you count ogg+flash)  
> format, especially another proprietary format.

You could instruct Safari users to install XiphQT.
http://xiph.org/quicktime/

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen at iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/