Native multimedia: why, what, and how?

In 2007, Anne van Kesteren wrote to the Working Group:

“Opera has some internal experimental builds with an implementation of a <video> element. The element exposes a simple API (for the moment) much like the Audio() object: play(), pause(), stop(). The idea is that it works like <object> except that it has special <video> semantics much like <img> has image semantics.”

While the API has increased in complexity, van Kesteren’s original announcement is now implemented in all the major browsers, including Internet Explorer 9.

An obvious companion to a <video> element is an <audio> element; they share many similar features, so in this chapter we discuss them together and note only the differences.

<video>: Why do you need a <video> element?