[whatwg] Some <video> questions

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Jan 29, 2008, at 5:11 PM, Charles wrote:

> Dave,
>
>> What am I missing that you don't like?
>
> Are Adobe/Microsoft going to be update their Flash/Silverlight browser
> plug-ins in order to be first-class <video> handlers in Safari on  
> Mac and
> Windows?

I think that would be a question for Adobe and Microsoft.

But I think the premise of the question misses the point of the  
<video> element. People now commonly use Flash to write video players  
because the old-school way of embedding video (using <object>/<embed>  
with QuickTime, Windows Media, Real or other plugins) was not capable  
or consistent enough. Note that this change happened relatively  
recently however. Web developers are willing to switch deployment  
technology if there is enough advantage to doing so.

<video> is a mechanism intended to give enough capabilities to write  
useful web video players in HTML+JS+CSS (with reasonable defaults for  
people who don't want to go to a lot of effort). It is designed to  
embed video, not video players implemented in other technologies. It  
is a video player, not a video player player.

Regards,
Maciej