Re: [Gnash-dev] 2nd try: How can Internet Archive flash script pick codec to use?

[Aaron Whitehouse]

John,

While I am very keen on Gnash as a project, I would have thought you
were better having the test for "Free format support" at a non-Flash
level.  With <video> tag support coming very soon in Free (and some
non-free - e.g. Opera) browsers, that would seem the ideal way to
deliver Free format support to those that can handle it.  Supporting
<video> tags would support the large Firefox-on-Windows community as
well as those on Gnu/Linux, whereas supporting
Free-formats-through-Flash would only target Gnu/Linux users who do
not use the proprietary Flash player.

I am not sure on this, I thought that there were (Wikimedia or
Metavid?) already scripts that test for <video> tag support and then
fall back to the Java Cortado player. These should be able to be
adapted (if you wish) to try <video> and fall back to FLV in Flash. A
quick Google suggests:
http://metavid.ucsc.edu/blog/2007/06/07/html5-video-the-future-is-now/
http://metavid.ucsc.edu/w/index.php/Mv_embed

Once FF 3.1 is released, I doubt that there will be many Gnash users
who cannot support <video> tags, whereas there will be a large group
who can (and would very much like to) see Free formats in <video> tags
who do not use Gnash.

Please let me know if I have missed your point.

Regards,

Aaron

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