[whatwg] <embed> and <object>

[Ian Hickson]

On Mon, 15 Jun 2009, Stephen Paul Weber wrote:
> 
> 1) What is the difference between <embed> and <object> in the spec?  
> The wording is quite different, but seem to say basically the same 
> thing: "plugin data".

<object>'s behaviour, for historical reasons, is subtly different to 
<embed>'s in a number of cases.


> 2) Under <object> it says: "The object element can represent an external 
> resource, which, depending on the type of the resource, will either be 
> treated as an image, as a nested browsing context, or as an external 
> resource to be processed by a plugin."
> 
> Why specify that a User Agent will use a plugin to process the data if 
> it is not an image or nested browsing context?  Why not leave that 
> decision up to the User Agent?

The term "plugin" is defined in a way that actually does leave it up to 
the UA.


On Tue, 16 Jun 2009, Thomas Broyer wrote:
> 
> Though, now that HTML5 introduces <video> and <audio>, I wonder if 
> <object> couldn't be equivalent to those when type of the resource is 
> some video or sound...

<object> doesn't expose the <video> or <audio> API, and doing so would be 
significantly more complicated than desired. The overloading of <object> 
as it already is was a mistake that we don't want to continue making.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'