[whatwg] Video proposals

[Gareth Hay]

> Gareth Hay wrote:
>>>    Sure. What happens if you're taking old videos of a page because
>>> you moved them to a site like YouTube? How would you tell them apart
>>> from other content in the page that might require <object>, like SVG
>>> graphics and such?
>>
>> I think this kind of reasoning leads us logically to tags for
>> everything. (Which I don't think is a good idea fwiw)
>
>    Not if new elements are based on significant use cases. Considering
> the popularity of YouTube and other video sites, I'd say that a use  
> case
> for <video> is a safe bet.
>
>    Also keep in mind that, using your logic, we should eliminate <img>
> because you can use <object> instead. (In fact, that makes more sense
> because <object> has better fallback than <img>, whereas <video> has
> equivalent fallback.)
>
I have actually argued this point previously.
I don't see how we can say 'for these use cases, we will generate  
very specific tags and for these use cases you just have to use a  
generic tag'.

Common sense would lead us to a one or the other approach.
I don't think it is a sensible argument to say, "well i use img all  
the time, so we should have a short hand for it"
It's not consistent, and lack of consistency leads to confusion.

I do not see why using <object> to display images is any worse than  
using <img>.

The only case is from the API point of view, object.play() makes no  
sense for a static image, but then that leads to the other end of my  
argument, do away with <object> all together and have all content in  
specialized tags.

>
>> There are of course other use cases, such as wanting to specify an
>> object in general terms and have it change over time. For example if
>> I have a video file, I can swap codecs should I need to, and not need
>> to alter the page at all.
>
>    Another issue is that while Flash may eventually disappear from the
> 'Net, video isn't going anywhere.

Yes, but in my use case, I can specify <object data="somemovie">
Then I can have a qt mov file if I like, but should I need to change  
to an ogg codec for some reason, all I do is put the ogg file in the  
same location, with the same name, no page changes required. While  
I'm not advocating this approach, it is clear there can be advantages  
in only having MIME specified at transfer time.