[TYPO3-core] [TYPO3-dev] MULTIMEDIA

[Martin Kutschker]

Hi!

Here are my thoughts on the topic:

The current implementation of the MULTIMEDIA cObject type and the 
accompanying content element is a very simple one. Unfortunately it 
relies also on the EMBED and the APPLET element which are not part of 
any W3C standard and has a set of questionable default attributes. OTOH 
it is easy to use and doesn't require much knowledge from the editor.

So I suggest to modify the code such that the generated HTML code uses 
the OBJECT element (with a possible fallback to EMBED or an image).

Adding support for user defined width/height and alt/title text is easy 
enough. More of a problem is the fact that the OBJECT element requires a 
type attribute with a mime type unless you specify a classid attribute 
which is Windows specific and requires a certain browser plugin. So we 
need (for convenience) a file extension to mime type mapping (with a 
manual override option). The mime type must be a DB field so it can be 
accessed by TypoScript!

Another point is that we may want to set the width/height attributes 
automatically. IMHO we should incorporate the getID3 library (or an 
equivalent) into typo3/contrib. We could use this lib also for download 
elements to display meta data for media files (eg play length, bitrates, 
etc).

The current parameter field can easily be changed to output PARAM 
elements instead of attributes for EMBED/APPLET.

But a problem might be real compatibility. Does anyone need the old 
EMBED tag? Will sites break if we just move on to OBJECT? Perhaps if the 
make use of the parameter field (not all attributes may map directly 
onto PARAM tags).  We could redefine the syntax that a line may look 
like this "name=value[|tag]". So all params are duplicated (when we have 
both OBJECT and EMBED) unless a tag name is appended.

As for using OBJECT and EMBED/APPLET: for xhtml 1.0 strict and xhtml 1.1 
no EMBED/APPLET should ever be created. For other DTDs I see the option 
to use both elements or only EMBED/APPLET. The latter option is for 
strict backward TYPO3 compatibility only. The TypoScript compatibility 
flag will provide a default: a setting of < 4.2 will get you 
EMBED/APPLET by default, otherwise its OBJECT. A site admin may choose 
both elements by an appropriate TS configuration.

Examples:

# mime type and size auto-detection, tag defined by default
movie = MULTIMEDIA
movie.file = movie.mpeg
movie.altText = last christmas

# width auto-detection, tag set to OBJECT and EMBED
movie = MULTIMEDIA
movie.file = movie.mpeg
movie.width = 200
movie.mimeType = video/mpeg
movie.tag = objectEmbed

Masi

PS: For a set of know mime types we could even create a flex form sheet 
with additional parameters for well-known plugins (eg autostart, 
show/hide UI, etc). But maybe such stuff is better suited in an extension.