[whatwg] video element not ready for prime time

Fri Jan 13 05:34:53 PST 2012

On Fri, 13 Jan 2012 01:53:23 +0100, Aryeh Gregor <ayg at aryeh.name> wrote:

> 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.

Or use a capturing event listener.

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

I agree that we should do something, but it would be limited to <video  
controls> as <audio> doesn't have a rendering area at all and for <video>  
without controls it could interfere with the scripted interface. For  
<audio controls> you could always make the controls look "dead" of course,  
to make it more clear that there was a problem.

-- 
Philip Jägenstedt
Core Developer
Opera Software