[whatwg] HTML 5 video tag questions

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Jul 10, 2009, at 6:11 PM, Jeff Walden wrote:

> On 10.7.09 17:44, Ian Hickson wrote:
>> The design is based around the assumption that we will eventually  
>> find a
>> common codec so that fallback won't ever be needed in supporting UAs.
>
> So has anyone ever actually pointed out the elephant in the room  
> here, that we might never do so?  I can't remember if so.  Maybe  
> HTML5: Galaxy Quest (cf. Captain Taggart's line) just isn't going to  
> happen in the foreseeable future.

There is likely an upper bound set by the maximum possible expiration  
date of any patents applying to any of the viable candidates. It's  
just that we'd like to reach agreement well before then.

>  (I'm also not convinced that we substantially hurt ourselves by  
> making fallback content the final <source>.)

I also think that would make more sense. Right now if a site wants to  
publish Ogg-only with Cortado as the fallback, they have to use  
scripting to make it work in Safari. And if a site wants to publish H. 
264-only with Flash or QuickTime as the fallback, they have to use  
scripting to make it work in Firefox.

Sites might want to do this even if there were an agreed-upon common  
codec that simply didn't meet their needs. So a common codec won't  
completely eliminate this issue. I can't see any advantage to the  
current design.

Regards,
Maciej