On Wed, 11 Feb 2009, Robert O'Callahan wrote: > > When a media element loads, reaches the HAVE_CURRENT_DATA state, but is > paused, and 'autoplay' is not set, we have to decide whether to keep > downloading data or not. If we expect the user to play the stream, we > should keep downloading and buffering data to minimize the chance that > buffering will be needed during playback. But if we don't expect the > user to play the stream, we should pause the download to conserve > resources. The latter is especially important on pages with large > numbers of media elements, only one or two of which the user will play. > > In general it's hard to see how to make a good guess automatically. If a > page has one (non-autoplay) media element on it, it's hard to know > whether the user is expected or not expected to play it. For example the > user might be expected to play it, but only after they've read some text > before the video (so autoplay is not appropriate). I think (but I'm not > sure) that authors are likely to be able to make better guesses, so I > think it would be useful to provide authors with control over this > decision. I think that authors are likely to want this control in the > same way they like to be able to preload images. > > So, how about adding an "autobuffer" attribute, which instructs the > browser that the user will probably play the video and as much data as > possible should be pre-downloaded? By default (when the attribute is not > present) the browser would be expected to pause the download after > reaching HAVE_CURRENT_DATA if the media element is paused and not > 'autoplay'.
I've added this attribute. On Thu, 12 Feb 2009, timeless wrote: > > if i'm a mobile browser vendor (and I am), and if I expect to use > Bluetooth to talk to a cell phone which has high bandwidth costs (and if > you're using an n800/n810 tethered to a phone in Canada, this is true), > then, i'm not sure I really want web pages to specify things quite like > this. I've made it clear that the browser doesn't have to autobuffer even if the attribute is present. On Fri, 13 Feb 2009, timeless wrote: > > i've seen a lot of places of late which have multiple videos which are > expected to play in some sort of sequence. > > just saying 'autobuffer' for all of them would kill my device, but a > suggestion of which ones to buffer in order would be helpful. On Sat, 14 Feb 2009, Robert O'Callahan wrote: > > Perhaps they should use script to add 'autobuffer' to the next video (or > just play() it). That seems to address this use case. -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
