[whatwg] Some <video> questions

[Oliver Hunt]

On 29/01/2008, at 6:17 PM, Charles wrote:

> Maciej,
>
>> But I think the premise of the question misses the point of the
>> <video> element.
>
> I may very well be completely missing the point.
>
> I'll be satisfied if someone tells me that <video> is not intended  
> to be the
> preferred way to embed video on web pages, in which case I'll  
> quietly return
> to my corner.
It is the preferred way to embed *video* not a video player, just  
pure unadorned video -- there
is no direct interface to the underlying implementation.  You appear  
to be having difficulty
distinguishing QuickTime the plugin, from QuickTime the framework --  
On MacOS quicktime
is the standard system framework that applications use for decoding  
video -- it is equivalent (in
this sense) to gstreamer in gtk, etc.

<video> is *not* an <object> replacement -- its sole purpose is to  
provide support for video
content that is native to html, and through player can be implemented  
and controlled through
JS and CSS.

>
>> People now commonly use Flash to write video players because the
>> old-school way of embedding video [...] was not capable or
>> consistent enough.
>
> There are lots of reasons that people use Flash, but it's no easier or
> harder to embed than any other player/runtime.
>
>> It is designed to embed video, not video players implemented in
>> other technologies.
>
> But in Safari, <video> = QuickTime.  Is that not a player-centric  
> rather
> than a content-centric design?
Once again, <video> is a html-native mechanism for supporting video  
media, not a plugin interface
there is no sense in having other runtimes present in it as that  
would defy the whole idea of being
*native*


--Oliver

>
> -- Charles
>
>