[whatwg] <object> element feedback

[Michael A. Puls II]

On Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:43:48 -0500, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:

> On Thu, 20 Nov 2008, Michael A. Puls II wrote:
>>
>> The spec currently says that Opera, Firefox and Safari can use the
>> classid attribute to load the plugin if they want. This might be done by
>> mapping a classid to a plugin handler. They just need to fall back if
>> that fails, instead of then trying type and data.
>>
>> The danger of mapping classid for non-activex browsers is that sometimes
>> an <object> that uses classid="" might be meant for an activeX plugin
>> that uses a different API than the NPAPI version of the plugin. This
>> where vendors would have to be careful before deciding what classids to
>> support.
>>
>> If that's not the handling intended by the spec and classid is meant to
>> be IE-only, the spec should be clarified. classid isn't a valid
>> attribute, so maybe that doesn't matter.
>
> What you describe is what I intended. There's a commented list of IDs  
> that
> maybe they should support (based on what they do support) but I don't  
> know
> whether to make it formal or not. So far I've opted to not make it  
> formal.
> I think it might depend on a platform-by-platform basis.
>

O.K.

To give you an example though:

clsid:6BF52A52-394A-11D3-B153-00C04F79FAA6 is for the WMP 7+ api. It uses a different API than the 6.4 API that's used by the NPAPI 6.4 wmp plugin (npdsplay.dll) that uses application/x-mplayer2.

So, mapping the classid in this case can break things, like volume, file loading, autostart etc and others things, including scripting.

However, clsid:22D6F312-B0F6-11D0-94AB-0080C74C7E95 is the 6.4 classid. It's still meant for the activeX 6.4 plugin, but it's pretty compatible with the NPAPI 6.4 wmp plugin.

However, The Firefox WMP NPAPI plugin does support the 7+ api so browsers could map clsid:6BF52A52-394A-11D3-B153-00C04F79FAA6 to it and it should work for most things. (There's still the problem of Firefox support <script for=""> for use with this plugin though, unless for="" support has be dropped)

But, the Firefox wmp plugin says that it supports application/x-mplayer2 also. So, it'd have to go something like this, maybe:

clsid:22D6F312-B0F6-11D0-94AB-0080C74C7E95 -> application/x-mplayer2
clsid:6BF52A52-394A-11D3-B153-00C04F79FAA6 -> application/x-ms-wmp (FF wmp plugin)

Or, the browser would have to map in a more reliable way by dll or something. Anyway...


-- 
Michael