[whatwg] audio vs. video

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Mar 5, 2007, at 4:47 PM, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:

> On Tue, 06 Mar 2007 02:56:31 +1100, Maik Merten  
> <maikmerten at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>> Elliotte Harold schrieb:
>>> If we add a video element, should we for the same reasons add an  
>>> audio
>>> element? If not, why not?
>>
>> I'd say that audio and video actually are pretty similiar. They need
>> controls to start playback, to stop playback, to seek, to pause, ...
>>
>> Perhaps there shouldn't be a <video> element but more something like
>> <mediastream audio="true" video="true"> or something like that.
>
> At which point you start heading back to "object". It seems we  
> should either take the SMIL approach and make special containers  
> for each kind of media (how many kinds? What is a flash video that  
> has interactive bits? Or an SVG that is mostly video with a few  
> interaction choices? Or interactive SVG with some audio?), or fix  
> object...

<object> is generic embedding container. Having specific embedding  
containers for particular types (<img>, <iframe>, the proposed  
<video>) allows for better semantics and useful APIs targeted to the  
content type.

I think it is ok to have both, especially since <object> provides an  
escape hatch for new kinds of content types that have not yet grown  
up enough to deserve first-class treatment.

Regards,
Maciej