[whatwg] A new attribute for <video> and low-power devices

[Simon Pieters]

On Mon, 18 May 2009 18:59:01 +0200, Benjamin M. Schwartz <bmschwar at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:

> Simon Pieters wrote:
>> If there is a controls attribute or if scripting is disabled, show
>> controls, else use author-provided scripted button (if any) to play the
>> video.
>
> Consider a webpage in which a side-effect of clicking on some scripted
> button is to trigger a small animation (using <video>) elsewhere on the
> page.  If your browser is configured to show <video> full-screen, this
> webpage will become nearly unusable, because the small animation will  
> take
> over the screen every time you click on a button.

I'm not convinced that this will be a problem in practice.


> I am proposing an additional attribute for <video> so that the browser
> will know not to do that.

I'm not convinced that an additional attribute would solve the problem: it is likely that some authors would use the attribute incorrectly, because it doesn't have any effect in their primary testing environment. If an author sets the attribute where it shouldn't be set, it effectively makes the video unavailable to users whose UA acts upon the attribute, which seems bad. I think a more effective solution is to give a non-modal message to the user saying "This page is trying to play a video. Press the Foo key to play.", or similar.

-- 
Simon Pieters
Opera Software