On Jan 29, 2008, at 6:17 PM, Charles wrote:
Maciej,
But I think the premise of the question misses the point of the
<video> element.
I may very well be completely missing the point.
I'll be satisfied if someone tells me that <video> is not intended
to be the
preferred way to embed video on web pages, in which case I'll
quietly return
to my corner.
That is the goal. But you seem to think that this requires being a
Flash or even Silverlight container, and I disagree that this is
relevant to the goal.
People now commonly use Flash to write video players because the
old-school way of embedding video [...] was not capable or
consistent enough.
There are lots of reasons that people use Flash, but it's no easier or
harder to embed than any other player/runtime.
I mentioned capabilities (in particular the ability to build rich
custom controls with custom branding) and consistency (Flash is more
widely available than any single video plugin). Not ease of embedding.
It is designed to embed video, not video players implemented in
other technologies.
But in Safari, <video> = QuickTime. Is that not a player-centric
rather
than a content-centric design?
QuickTime is an implementation detail. To the extent that we promise
support for specific video formats, it will be based on the format,
not the implementation technology, and we reserve the right to change
the back end for some or all video formats. In any case, QuickTime is
a technology for playing back video (and audio), not a technology for
running content that might implement a media player. It is not
parallel to Flash. Flash is more akin to applet technologies like Java.
Regards,
Maciej
