[html4all] Object element support

[Robert J Burns]

Hi Leif,

On Aug 21, 2008, at 12:11 PM, Robert J Burns wrote:
> On Aug 21, 2008, at 6:15 AM, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
>>
>> IN IE 6 the statement seems correct. And after having installed
>> IE8beta, it seems you are right in that it is not correct for IE8
>> ... (Have not tried IE7, and do not trust the IE7 emulation of
>> IE8.) However, a better test case than yours is this (since in
>> your test, in IE8beta1, the GIF would actually be displayed):
>>
>> <object data="data:application/x-unknown,ERROR" >
>> <object type="image/gif" data="object-ie8.gif" >
>> some fallback</object></object
>>
>> Either they were wrong, or we misunderstands the issue ... I
>> wonder if they mean that if an OBJECT with an working
>> data="attribute" URI is found, then then the other nested OBJECTS
>> and the rest of the fallback content is ignored.
>
> Well, if an object is reached that IE can handle natively or through a
> plugin handler, then that is what the HTML4.01 recommendation expects.
> The issue is if you view the DOM, do you see the descendant nodes
> there. If so then a sophisticated add-on or screen reader (something
> like Fire Vox for example, though it is for Firefox) can get to the
> fallback for accessibility reasons. In other words the DOM should look
> something like:
>
> HTML
> 	• HEAD
> 	• BODY
> 		• OBJECT data="data:application/x-unknown,ERROR"
> 			• #text:
> 			• OBJECT type="image/gif" data="object-ie8.gif"
> 				• #text: some fallback
>
> If that's all there in IE, and IE selects the first supported or
> enabled mime type in hierarchical order, then that's all we would
> expect (since IE has no aural/braille features of its own).

It occurs to me that the IE blogger may have simply been saying that  
they don't support alterante fallback in a different way. For example  
if the first file is application/xhtml+xml, and the resource is  
available, IE may instead resort to downloading it rather than falling  
back to the next OBJECT. Or maybe they do not support more than two  
fallbacks. Or maybe they're just saying that they don't offer user  
options to disable certain types of content (like for accessibility  
reasons). It is difficult to figure out what they could mean there[1].

Take care,
Rob

[1]: See "Known issues we are not planning to change in IE8" in the  
official Internet Explorer blog on the OBJECT element. <http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/04/10/html-and-dom-standards-compliance-in-ie8-beta-1.aspx 
 >

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