[whatwg] Some <video> questions

[Dave Singer]

At 16:06  -0800 29/01/08, Charles wrote:
>James,
>
>>  Since browsers are free to implement native <video> support with a
>>  pluggable backend...
>
>I understand, but something makes me think that this problem won't get
>solved when developers are just free to solve it.  (This isn't a criticism
>of browser developers, BTW.  There's no incentive to fix anything but the
>formats they care about.)
>
>Just to focus on one popular way of putting video on the web, Apple won't be
>supporting Flash video* and Adobe won't again package Flash as a QuickTime
>media type.
>
>>  Are you looking for a way for plugins, rather than the browser
>>  itself, to handle <video>?
>
>Yes, with the brower handling handles precendence and event routing, etc.

But that's roughly what the cascading source elements do.

say you have 85% of your hits from two browser vendors, A and B, each 
of whom has a specific optional format they support that you think is 
better than the mandated one.  You write
<video...>
   <source vendorA...>
   <source vendorB...>
   <source mandatedDefault...>
</video>

and the rest of your page gets a uniform interface no matter what 
browser is in effect.  Indeed, if you later decide to support 
vendorC's format, you can insert that without changing anything else 
-- the rest of the HTML, the scripts, event handling, nothing.  Seems 
like a big advantage to me.  And if the mandated format is good 
enough, you have (we intend) 100% coverage from that, also.  You get 
real integration with the rest of HTML and CSS etc.  These all seem 
like pretty strong advantages to me.

And, in addition, nothing stops a vendor from having plug-ins at the 
browser, framework, or codec level, to offer further flexibility.

What am I missing that you don't like?
-- 
David Singer
Apple/QuickTime