[whatwg] Scripted querying of <video> capabilities

[Tim Starling]

James Ide wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 3:46 PM, Chris Double
> <chris.double at double.co.nz <mailto:chris.double at double.co.nz>> wrote:
>
>     A browser that supports <video> but not Ogg will not use the fallback
>     <object>. Instead it will just give an error when loading the foo.ogg
>     file.
>
>
> In this case I believe it would be possible to listen to the `error'
> event and dynamically insert fallback content if the <video> element
> has an error state of MEDIA_ERR_DECODE. However, this fails when using
> <source> elements as the resource-selecting algorithm just terminates
> if all of the media sources are of unsupported types. More
> complications arise when we consider cases where only a subset of the
> codecs in the resource are supported and different events are fired
> and error codes set.

Even if it did work, you couldn't support a user interface in the
Wikipedia style, where Cortado is used by default, and the <video>
element is offered as a non-default option to the user if it is
supported. You'd have to play the video just to find out.

Sorry Chris, but currently Cortado and QuickTime are the only players
with seek/progress bars, so it made sense to put them first.

-- Tim Starling