[whatwg] video element not ready for prime time

Thu Jan 12 16:53:23 PST 2012

On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 12:46 PM, Francis Boumphrey
<boumphreyfr at gmail.com> wrote:
> e.g. <video src='myvideo.mp4' controls>
>
> and my user agent does not support the format, all I get (in my versions of
> Opera and Firefox) is a blank screen. No message (as I would get with
> <embed>) and as far as I can see there is no way for me as an author to
> know that the video is not being played so I cannot code a 'write around'.

Boris answered the rest of your questions, but here's a way to detect errors:

data:text/html,<!doctype html>
<video src='nonexistent.mp4' controls onerror='alert("error")'></video>

If you use <source>, the error event is fired at the source element
instead and doesn't bubble (why not?), so you have to put onerror on
the source element instead.

I don't know why UAs don't provide their own error messages, though.
They provide error icons for failed image loads.