[whatwg] <video> application/octet-stream

[Philip Jägenstedt]

On Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:15:18 +0200, Mike Shaver <mike.shaver at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 9:10 AM, Nils Dagsson Moskopp
> <nils-dagsson-moskopp at dieweltistgarnichtso.net> wrote:
>> (clients try to guess based on
>> incorrect information and you end up with stupid switches).
>
> Could you be more specific about the incorrect information?  My
> understanding, from this thread and elsewhere, is that video formats
> are reliably sniffable, and furthermore that the appropriate MIME type
> for ogg-with-VP8 vs ogg-with-theora isn't clear (or possibly even
> extant).  It seems like reliance on MIME type will result in more of
> the guessing-and-stupid-switches than sniffing.

The MIME type for both of those would be video/ogg. It wouldn't be hard or  
very error-prone to use only the MIME type, Firefox already does that.  
It's also not very hard to rely on sniffing, which all the other browsers  
do, although Opera still checks the MIME type first.

The only concrete side-effects I can see are:

* Configuring the MIME type is an extra step that seemingly many authors  
don't know that they need. That it is easy to configure doesn't really  
help.

* Ignoring the MIME type will lead to more videos served as text/plain,  
which will render as huge amounts of garbage text in current browsers if  
opened directly (i.e. in a top-level browsing context).

-- 
Philip Jägenstedt
Core Developer
Opera Software