[whatwg] Comments on the <video> element

[Vladimir Vukicevic]

Martin Atkins wrote:
> Mihai Sucan wrote:
>>
>> For Youtube, a site which provides bloggers an easy way to integrate 
>> videos, this would prove even ... hard. Here's the simple code users 
>> have to copy/paste:
>>
>> <object width="425" height="350">
>> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/id"></param>
>> <param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param>
>> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/id" 
>> type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" 
>> height="350"></embed>
>> </object>
>>
>> Switching to the <video> element, would require a <script> element, 
>> and technically, for the developers at Youtube, this would mean a lot 
>> more work. They script must be carefully coded so that it doesn't 
>> break the myriad of blog systems, etc. Blogs don't even allow scripts 
>> to be run (last time I heard). Say Youtube wants to do this, users 
>> themselves would no longer like this. "What? Am I going to put a 
>> potentially risky script within my site?"
> 
> [...]
> However, if it requires any scripting to use it'll never work because 
> LiveJournal absolutely cannot allow scripting.
> 
> So allow me to offer this as another vote to video being, by default, a 
> completely standalone element with browser-provided UI. By all means 
> allow authors to override it if they want to do something neat.

I don't think the video element, as currently specified, is supposed to 
be the end-all be-all <video> specification.  There's nothing to prevent 
the specification of a UI attribute later on, when more of the issues 
around the core "get video in a HTML element" issues are better understood.

Specifying a UI at this point would end up with the spec being bogged 
down with what the UI must and must not support.  What's the 
disadvantage to doing this in multiple steps?  Let's get video up in an 
element in a cross-browser way first.  This means that it won't be 
immediately usable for all potential use cases (but even with UI it 
wouldn't be anyway; I don't see youtube jumping to provide 
theora/mpeg4/whatever streams), but once it's better understood how it 
-does- solve some use cases, those can be built on.

    - Vlad