[whatwg] WhatWG and <embed>

[Boris Zbarsky]

Shadow2531 wrote:
> I'd like to see the steps spelled out *exactly* because HTML 4.01 does
> not do that.

Yes.  That's what this thread is all about.

> If classid and data are both present, Firefox ignores the data and
> gives the classid a shot. If there's no activex plug-in installed that
> handles the clsid, Firefox fails and goes to alternate content.

You mean "type", not "data", right?  And actually, all non-java classids just 
make Firefox show the alternate content, unless you have the optional ActiveX 
stuff installed.

> It looks like you're saying that people that target the activeX method
> don't want to fall back on the NPAPI method.  But, what if an author
> wants to?  You'd probably say to use alternate content and another
> object tag or embed tag.

Yep. That's the whole point of <object> having alternate content.

> However, I think it'd be neat to fall back (or give the option through
> an attribute or something to fall back ) on the data off the current
> object element.

Why reinvent the wheel?  There is already a way of doing fallback with <object>.

> Opera doesn't do classid stuff (except for java) so it can ignore the
> classid and use data.

In my opinion, this is a bug in Opera; one they introduced to be more compatible 
with IE in many cases (and that breaks other cases, sometimes badly).

-Boris