[whatwg] Video (Was: How not to fix HTML)

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Oct 30, 2006, at 2:49 PM, Ian Hickson wrote:

> On Mon, 30 Oct 2006, Charles Iliya Krempeaux wrote:
>>
>> Would you be open to hearing suggestions about how to add native  
>> video
>> and video player support?
>
> Sure. FWIW, there's a lot of interest in browser vendors about  
> introducing
> a <video> element or some such (or maybe making browsers natively  
> support
> video in <object>, or both).
>
> (What's most needed right now in this area is probably implementation
> experience.)

Having a <video> element (and perhaps also <audio> and <animation>  
for other timed media) is mostly orthogonal to native non-plugin  
implementation. Such elements could still defer to plugins to do  
their work, or conversely some types could be given a native  
implementation in <object> elements, much as HTML or image content is  
done today. The main advantages for distinguished elements would be:

1) Better semantics. A search engine indexing documents to find "most  
popular videos" or the like would be able to see from the source  
document what is embedded as a video rather than having to guess  
based on the type or URL an <object> points to. Similarly, screen  
readers would know that a <video> element might still be partially  
accessible to a blind user whereas <audio> would not.

2) Potential to define a useful common API for controlling timed  
media; right now each plugin exposes its own different API if it  
exposes one at all.

Regards,
Maciej