[whatwg] on codecs in a 'video' tag.

David Hyatt hyatt at apple.com
Tue Apr 3 22:07:20 PDT 2007


I agree with this.  The tag isn't worth much to the Web if it's not  
interoperable among *all* Web browsers.  That includes,  
unfortunately, Internet Explorer.  That is why I think trying to pick  
a baseline format in the WhatWG is premature.  Until the <video>  
element moves to the HTML WG and we find out what Microsoft's opinion  
is on this subject, I'm not really sure what the point is of this  
codec debate.  Even if the browser vendors of the WhatWG all agreed  
to support Theora tomorrow, Mozilla + Opera + Safari constitute only  
20% of total browser market share.

That percentage is not even remotely compelling enough for content  
authors to want to use the <video> element over proprietary  
alternatives like Flash.

dave
(hyatt at apple.com)

  seems On Apr 3, 2007, at 9:50 PM, Håkon Wium Lie wrote:

> Seriously, though, I think this group is concerned that having a
> polished <video> interface isn't worth much in terms of
> interoperability unless there is a baseline format.



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