According to the draft for object there is no requirement to specify
the mime type in object tag anyway, so I'm guessing some people will
never specify it.
f the file fails to load, you don't have a
MIME type at all, so what kind of presentation would a broken video
have
on the page if you don't even have a MIME type to tell you it's a
video?
If you have a <video> element, it could just give you a broken film
icon.
For the matter of failing to load, what is your expectation?
If you mean for the user to be notified of a plugin or codec, you can
specify fallback content anyway, and if the file is missing, then it
doesn't matter if you have specified a MIME type or not, the file can
no longer be found even if the user is told it's a video/ogg, or
whatever.
Sure. What happens if you're taking old videos of a page because
you
moved them to a site like YouTube? How would you tell them apart from
other content in the page that might require <object>, like SVG
graphics
and such?
I think this kind of reasoning leads us logically to tags for
everything. (Which I don't think is a good idea fwiw)
If I wanted to isolate all SVG content from a page and it also
contains flash but the previous incumbent didn't use MIME then I am
also stuck, but again, if the actual content has gone from the
internet a MIME type isn't going to help me much.
There are of course other use cases, such as wanting to specify an
object in general terms and have it change over time. For example if
I have a video file, I can swap codecs should I need to, and not need
to alter the page at all.
Gareth
