[whatwg] <video> element proposal

Maik Merten maikmerten at gmx.net
Tue Mar 6 03:59:33 PST 2007


Gervase Markham schrieb:
> A good point. I know nothing about extending IE; would it be possible to
> have an IE addon which implemented support for a <video> tag, or would
> it need to be a plugin and therefore use <object>-style markup?

Well, I guess everybody here will hate me for proposing it... and I
think it's ugly... but well...

<video>
Perhaps a verbose description of what can be seen here?
<novideo>
D'oh, your browser is outdated... let's embed an <object> here
</novideo>
</video>

Downside: Bloat.

Upside: The author can either embed an object (e.g. in IE video would
call the Windows Media Player - and that can be extended to support
basically every media format - including MPEG, the Ogg formats (there is
software for this in existance) or whatever else is out there) or simply
tell the user to get a decent browser (yay, browser buttons all over
again!). Plus it would feature a description of the video content for
browsers that can't possibly display video (text browsers, mobile phones
that don't have the bandwidth).


Anyway: With external software it should be possible to get the IE to
support a <video> tag. In worst case just grab the document source and
substitue <video> with <object> and make sure the user has a fitting
plugin for the mandatory format installed.


Maik Merten






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