On Jun 19, 2009, at 05:30 , Ian Hickson wrote:
On Fri, 19 Jun 2009, timeless wrote:
On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 4:13 AM, Arun Ranganathan<a...@mozilla.com>
wrote:
Hixie, I think a Base64 representation of the file resource may be
sufficient, particularly for the image use case (which is how it
is used
already). Can you flesh out why the new schema is a good idea?
so. I have folders with 100-1000mb of pictures in them. If I decide
that
I want to upload them all (Picasa style), i'd expect it would take a
very long time to convert each file name into a base64 url.
This is exactly the use case I had in mind, yes. data: URLs are fine
for
testing and prototyping, but as a practical matter, they don't really
scale to real-world needs. For example, imagine a user uploading a
local
video (~1GB) to YouTube, where the page wants to show the video in a
<video> element as (or immediately before) the user is uploading it
(e.g.
so the user can set the times where ads should show). A data: URL is
clearly not an option here, I think.
It also doesn't scale to the (as yet hypothetical, but suggested
multiple times) case in which the file input is used to point to a
capturing device (e.g. a webcam). You do want to be able to point
<video> at the stream, but I have reservations about a magical Base64
string that would just keep growing :)
At the risk of opening one big bad can of worms, the use case for such
a synthetic URI scheme seems reasonably close to that for widget URIs
(we might have to wiggle around context-dependent semantics, which
could get ugly). Perhaps we should mint a single scheme that would
cover all runtime operational needs to synthesise a URI and use it
across the board. After all, it's about being to reference something
without using file:.
This of course can get interesting. We've looked at getting such a URI
from image and video files and having <img> and <video> point to them,
and there's no question it'd work fine for <audio>. I'd expect it to
work with HTML files and <iframe>. What about getting said URI and
linking to it with <a>?
--
Robin Berjon - http://berjon.com/
Feel like hiring me? Go to http://robineko.com/
