[whatwg] <video> fallback behaviour (was: Re: <video> element feedback)

[Robert Brodrecht]

Simon Pieters said:
> Oh. I thought <video> fallback would work pretty much like <object>
> fallback, but I see that's not the case. When I think about it it makes
>  sense; <video> is pretty much like <iframe>, it never falls back in UAs
>   that support it.

Oh, damn it.  I thought it'd work like <object>, too.  I'm not sure I like
the only-fallback-if-no-support idea.  I'm getting the feeling that there
won't be one common video format among the browsers.  I think not having
fallback to nested video elements to get at other formats would ultimately
be a bad thing.

When PNG support sucked in IE6, I just didn't use alpha PNGs and opted for
some other format.  If there is no shared format, the only ways to support
multiple video formats for multiple browsers would be:

1. Just have two video elements on screen (bad).
2. Swap the src with JavaScript (won't work if JS is off).
3. Delegate content on the server based on http-accept [?] (best of the
three, but not very fun).
4. Maybe conditional comments if IE is the oddball (we'll see, but I don't
like this option much either).

Any thoughts on this or did I miss something?

-- 
Robert <http://robertdot.org>