Summary: OBJECT, EMBED, and various spec-validators have a strange history.
Tim Blair wrote: > To make sure that all browsers can see Flash you have to use > non-standard HTML. Either that or if you really really want your HTML > to validate, you can use messy JavaScript to inject the HTML. If you're referring to the EMBED tag, it's actually the standard that's non-standard here. When the W3C rewrote this section in HTML 4.0 they didn't provide any guidance for how the existing world (which had been using EMBED, and then accommodating Microsoft's OBJECT) might migrate to the new world order of happily-validating documents. If anything, the recommendation against the existing EMBED in HTML 4.0 should be an argument against a committee-centric approach, not against browser extensions. It's a galling argument, "Don't use Flash because the markup won't validate." The Macromedia Flash Player doesn't care how it's invoked... the OBJECT and EMBED tags are parsed by the browser, not the Player, and those are the terms they used before the committee ever sat down. It's particularly galling for me because in the late 90s I was active on the mailing lists and kept asking all the web-standards evangelists "Hey, what will you do about the browsers that currently and happily use EMBED? seize them? repossess them? what?" and in retrospect I should have been even more of a curmudgeon on this because they punted on the issue, and seven years later it's getting reworked around into this strange formulation. Summary: The validators didn't validate to reality. jd -- John Dowdell . Macromedia Developer Support . San Francisco CA USA Weblog: http://www.macromedia.com/go/blog_jd Aggregator: http://www.macromedia.com/go/weblogs Technotes: http://www.macromedia.com/support/ Spam killed my private email -- public record is best, thanks. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Logware (www.logware.us): a new and convenient web-based time tracking application. Start tracking and documenting hours spent on a project or with a client with Logware today. Try it for free with a 15 day trial account. http://www.houseoffusion.com/banners/view.cfm?bannerid=67 Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=i:4:222147 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:4 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.4 Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54
