[whatwg] Adding and removing media source elements

[Ian Hickson]

On Tue, 3 Feb 2009, Philip Jägenstedt wrote:
> On Tue, 03 Feb 2009 05:44:07 +0100, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
> > On Tue, 3 Feb 2009, Chris Pearce wrote:
> > > 
> > > (2) Why don't we invoke load() whenever a media element's src 
> > > attribute or <source> children are changed, regardless of 
> > > networkState? That way changes to the media's src/source other than 
> > > the first change would have the same effect as first change, i.e. 
> > > they'd have an immediate effect, causing load() to be invoked.
> > 
> > Doing this would cause the first file to be downloaded multiple times 
> > in a row, leading to excessive network usage.
> 
> Surely this can't be the only reason? User agents are free to 
> speculatively keep the current source loading when src/source changes 
> and to stop loading it only if the "current media resource" does change. 
> That, and caching, should be enough.

It seems rather unclean to require that kind of hack. It would also make 
the actual exact detectable behaviour dependent on a variety of timing and 
race conditions, which I generally try to avoid.

Anyway, the way the spec has been changed now solves this -- dynamic 
additions are used, without needing a reload of the previous sources.


> I have always imagined that the reason for the conditioned load() is to 
> not interrupt playback by fiddling with the DOM or doing something like 
> v.src=v.src (although I'm quite sure that doesn't count as changing the 
> attribute).

Yes, that's the intent.

We can't just rely on waiting for the script to end because the list of 
<source> elements might not be known right away -- e.g. it might be drip 
fed by the parser.


> Related, since load() is async it depends on timing whether or not
> 
>    <video id=v></video>
>    <script>
>     v = document.getElementById('v');
>     v.src = 'test';
>    </script>
> 
> causes the source 'test' to be loaded, as the network state may not be
> NETWORK_EMPTY when the src attribute is set.

This is addressed now.


> The same goes for adding source child elements of course.

This too.


On Wed, 4 Feb 2009, Philip Jägenstedt wrote:
> 
> I also had this "avoid accidental reloads" theory before, but it doesn't 
> strike me as very reasonable after thinking more about it. Can anyone 
> give an example of a use case where the DOM src attribute or <source> 
> elements are added/changed "accidentally" so that it would cause an 
> unwanted reload?

The parser:

   <video>
     <source>
     <!-- network lag inserts a pause here... -->
     <source>

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
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