[uf-discuss] RFC: sHTML Video Thumbnailing

[Charles Iliya Krempeaux]

Hello,

This is an RFC -- Request for Comments.  So I'm looking for people's
opinions, comments, and criticisms on all this.


Note... this is NOT a Microformat.  Nor an attempt to define a new
Microformat.  This is about semantic HTML (sHTML) markup.

(Hopefully this isn't too off-topic for this mailing list.  I'm just
looking to tap this group for comments on this.)



BACKGROUND

I'm developing some software for a client that will (among other
things) display video thumbnails within HTML.

I've actually used this form of semantic HTML before.  However, until
this, none of it was publicly released.

(Also, with this software, once it is out there, I won't be in control
of the software... and thus not able to make corrections to the markup
later.)



SEMANTIC HTML

The way I'm planning on marking these up is using a combination of 2
built in HTML elements.

The <q> element and the <img> element.

Conceptually, I'm considering a video thumbnail to be analogous to
quoted text.  In other words, I'm conceptually considering video
thumbnails to be a "quote" of a video.

So, for example, we would have something like...

    <q cite="http://example.com/video"><img
src="http://example.com/thumbnail.jpg" /></q>

Or if you want that pretty-printed...

    <q cite="http://example.com/thevideo">
        <img src="http://example.com/thumbnail.jpg" />
    </q>



CITING VIDEO

In this, I make use of the <q> element's "cite" attribute to refer to
the "video" where the thumbnail is taken from.

This "cite" attribute might refer to a binary video file.  But could
also refer to a "blog post" or "vlog post" in which the video is
embedded.

For the purposes of this, I'm considering some (but not all) HTML
pages to be "video".  So.. for example, an HTML "vlog post" is
considered to be "video".



TYPES OF THUMBNAILS

Really there are different sources a thumbnail can come from.

A thumbnail can come from a video.  But it could also come from a
(static) image.

So... to distinguish between these different types of thumbnails, I've
added a class-video to the <q> element.  (I suppose if you have a
thumbnail from a static image you could add class-image... but
anyways....)

So, our example from before becomes...

    <q class="video" cite="http://example.com/video"><img
src="http://example.com/thumbnail.jpg" /></q>

Or if you want that pretty-printed...

    <q class="video" cite="http://example.com/thevideo">
        <img src="http://example.com/thumbnail.jpg" />
    </q>



RFC

Comments?  Critisizms?  Opinions?


-- 
    Charles Iliya Krempeaux, B.Sc.

    charles @ reptile.ca
    supercanadian @ gmail.com

    developer weblog: http://ChangeLog.ca/