On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 6:48 AM, bjartur <svartma...@gmail.com> wrote: >>I just came across a curious situation in the spec: IIUC, it seems the >>@volume and @muted attributes are only IDL attributes and not content >>attributes. This means that an author who is creating an audio-visual >>Webpage has to use JavaScript to turn down (or up) the loudness of >>their media elements or mute them rather than just being able to >>specify this through content attributes. >>If you want to control the volume for the user after the page loads >>then yes, you'll need JavaScript. >>I've searched the archives and didn't find a discussion or reasons for >>this. Apologies if this has been discussed before. >> >>I am guessing the reasons for not having them as content attributes is >>that anything that requires muting of audio-visual content is assumed >> to need JavaScript anyway. > > Exactly. > >>However, if I have multiple videos on a page, all on autoplay, it >>would be nice to turn off the sound of all of them without JavaScript. >>With all the new CSS3 functionality, I can, for example, build a >>spinning cube of video elements that are on autoplay or a marquee of >>videos on autoplay - all of which would require muting the videos to >>be bearable. If we added @muted to the content attributes, it would be >>easy to set the muted state without having to write any JavaScript. > > If you need the audio to be muted you should use CSS. If you need to > control volume dynamically you need scripting.
I am not aware of a CSS property for media elements that lets you control the muted state. Can you link me to a specification? >>As for the @volume attribute, I think it would be similarly useful if >>an author could control the loudness at which a video or audio file >>starts playing back, in particular if he/she knows it is actually a >>fairly loud/quiet file. > > Well, you have a point. That can be done by increasing the volume > of the soundtrack itself, metedata (like embedded volume metadata in > MPEG files) and should be possible in CSS. Adding it to HTML as well > seems redundant. Are you saying that a Web author needs to edit the media resource in order to change the default volume setting for the resource? I think that's a bit of a stretch. Also, if you have a pointer to how this can be done in CSS, that would be highly appreciated. Thanks, Silvia.