Rolling custom controls

One truly spiffing aspect of the <video> and <audio> media elements is that they come with a super easy JavaScript API. The API’s events and methods are the same for both <audio> and <video>. With that in mind, we’ll stick with the sexier media element: the <video> element for our JavaScript discussion.

As you saw at the start of this chapter, Anne van Kesteren has spoken about the new API and about the new simple methods such as play(), pause() (there’s no stop method: simply pause and move to the start), load(), and canPlayType(). In fact, that’s all the methods on the media element. Everything else is events and attributes.

Table 4.3 provides a reference list of media attributes, methods, and events.

Table 4.3 Media Attributes, Methods, and Events