[whatwg] Javascript API to query supported codecs for <video> and <audio>

[j at oil21.org]

On Wed, 2008-06-18 at 12:03 +0200, Anne van Kesteren wrote: 
> Why is that needed? The elements provide a way to link to multiple codecs  
> of which the user agent will then make a choice.
i do not intend to provide multiple codecs since that would require
multiple backend implementations for playing files form an offset,
encoding files in multiple codecs on the server, more disk space etc,

instead i would only use the <video> tag if the codec i use is supported
and fall back to other means via <object> / java / flash or whatever to
playback the video or indicate that the user has to install a
qt/dshow/gstreamer plugin. in an ideal world i could use <video> like i
can use <img> now and be done with it, but since this is not the case we
need tools to make the best out of <video>, not knowing what the browser
supports and just hoping that it could work is not an option.

j