picture elementsource elementimg elementsource and img elementsiframe elementembed elementobject elementparam elementvideo elementaudio elementtrack elementTrackEvent interfacemap elementarea elementpicture elementSupport: pictureChrome for Android 57+Chrome 38+UC Browser for Android 11.4+iOS Safari 9.3+Firefox 38+IE NoneSamsung Internet 4+Opera Mini NoneAndroid Browser 56+Edge 13+Safari 9.1+Opera 25+
Source: caniuse.com
source elements, followed by one img element,
optionally intermixed with script-supporting elements.[HTMLConstructor]
interface HTMLPictureElement : HTMLElement {};
The picture element is a container
which provides multiple sources to its contained img element
to allow authors to declaratively control or give hints to the user agent about which image resource to use,
based on the screen pixel density, viewport size, image format, and other factors.
It represents its children.
The picture element is somewhat different from the similar-looking
video and audio elements. While all of them contain source
elements, the source element's src attribute
has no meaning when the element is nested within a picture element, and the resource
selection algorithm is different. Also, the picture element itself does not display
anything; it merely provides a context for its contained img element that enables it
to choose from multiple URLs.
source elementpicture element, before the img element.track elements.src — Address of the resourcetype — Type of embedded resourcesrcset — Images to use in different situations (e.g. high-resolution displays, small monitors, etc)sizes — Image sizes for different page layoutsmedia — Applicable media[HTMLConstructor]
interface HTMLSourceElement : HTMLElement {
[CEReactions] attribute USVString src;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString type;
[CEReactions] attribute USVString srcset;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString sizes;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString media;
};
The source element allows authors to specify multiple alternative
source sets for img elements or multiple alternative
media resources for media
elements. It does not represent anything on its own.
The type attribute may be present. If
present, the value must be a valid MIME type.
The remainder of the requirements depend on whether the parent is a picture
element or a media element:
source element's parent is a picture elementThe srcset attribute must be present, and
is a srcset attribute.
The srcset attribute contributes the image sources to the source set, if the
source element is selected.
If the srcset attribute has any image candidate strings using a width descriptor, the sizes attribute must also be present, and is a
sizes attribute. The sizes attribute
contributes the source size to the source set, if the
source element is selected.
The media attributes may also be present.
If present, the value must contain a valid media query list. The user agent will
skip to the next source element if the value does not match the environment.
The type gives the type of the images in the
source set, to allow the user agent to skip to the next source element
if it does not support the given type.
If the type attribute is not
specified, the user agent will not select a different source element if it finds
that it does not support the image format after fetching it.
When a source element has a following sibling source element or
img element with a srcset attribute
specified, it must have at least one of the following:
A media attribute specified with a value that,
after stripping leading and trailing
ASCII whitespace, is not the empty string and is not an ASCII
case-insensitive match for the string "all".
A type attribute specified.
The src attribute must not be present.
source element's parent is a media elementThe src attribute gives the URL
of the media resource. The value must be a valid non-empty URL potentially
surrounded by spaces. This attribute must be present.
Dynamically modifying a source element and its attribute when the
element is already inserted in a video or audio element will have no
effect. To change what is playing, just use the src
attribute on the media element directly, possibly making use of the canPlayType() method to pick from amongst available
resources. Generally, manipulating source elements manually after the document has
been parsed is an unnecessarily complicated approach.
The type attribute gives the type of the media
resource, to help the user agent determine if it can play this media
resource before fetching it. The codecs parameter, which certain
MIME types define, might be necessary to specify exactly how the resource is encoded. [RFC6381]
The following list shows some examples of how to use the codecs= MIME
parameter in the type attribute.
<source src='video.mp4' type='video/mp4; codecs="avc1.42E01E, mp4a.40.2"'>
<source src='video.mp4' type='video/mp4; codecs="avc1.58A01E, mp4a.40.2"'>
<source src='video.mp4' type='video/mp4; codecs="avc1.4D401E, mp4a.40.2"'>
<source src='video.mp4' type='video/mp4; codecs="avc1.64001E, mp4a.40.2"'>
<source src='video.mp4' type='video/mp4; codecs="mp4v.20.8, mp4a.40.2"'>
<source src='video.mp4' type='video/mp4; codecs="mp4v.20.240, mp4a.40.2"'>
<source src='video.3gp' type='video/3gpp; codecs="mp4v.20.8, samr"'>
<source src='video.ogv' type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"'>
<source src='video.ogv' type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, speex"'>
<source src='audio.ogg' type='audio/ogg; codecs=vorbis'>
<source src='audio.spx' type='audio/ogg; codecs=speex'>
<source src='audio.oga' type='audio/ogg; codecs=flac'>
<source src='video.ogv' type='video/ogg; codecs="dirac, vorbis"'>
The srcset, sizes, and media
attributes must not be present.
If a source element is inserted as a
child of a media element that has no src
attribute and whose networkState has the value NETWORK_EMPTY, the user agent must invoke the media
element's resource selection
algorithm.
The IDL attributes src, type, srcset, sizes and media must reflect the respective
content attributes of the same name.
If the author isn't sure if user agents will all be able to render the media resources
provided, the author can listen to the error event on the last
source element and trigger fallback behavior:
<script>
function fallback(video) {
// replace <video> with its contents
while (video.hasChildNodes()) {
if (video.firstChild instanceof HTMLSourceElement)
video.removeChild(video.firstChild);
else
video.parentNode.insertBefore(video.firstChild, video);
}
video.parentNode.removeChild(video);
}
</script>
<video controls autoplay>
<source src='video.mp4' type='video/mp4; codecs="avc1.42E01E, mp4a.40.2"'>
<source src='video.ogv' type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"'
onerror="fallback(parentNode)">
...
</video>
img elementusemap attribute: Interactive content.alt — Replacement text for use when images are not availablesrc — Address of the resourcesrcset — Images to use in different situations (e.g. high-resolution displays, small monitors, etc)sizes — Image sizes for different page layoutscrossorigin — How the element handles crossorigin requestsusemap — Name of image map to useismap — Whether the image is a server-side image mapwidth — Horizontal dimensionheight — Vertical dimensionreferrerpolicy — Referrer policy for fetches initiated by the element[HTMLConstructor, NamedConstructor=Image(optional unsigned long width, optional unsigned long height)]
interface HTMLImageElement : HTMLElement {
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString alt;
[CEReactions] attribute USVString src;
[CEReactions] attribute USVString srcset;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString sizes;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString? crossOrigin;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString useMap;
[CEReactions] attribute boolean isMap;
[CEReactions] attribute unsigned long width;
[CEReactions] attribute unsigned long height;
readonly attribute unsigned long naturalWidth;
readonly attribute unsigned long naturalHeight;
readonly attribute boolean complete;
readonly attribute USVString currentSrc;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString referrerPolicy;
};
An img element represents an image.
The image given by the src and srcset attributes, and any previous sibling
source elements' srcset attributes if the
parent is a picture element, is the embedded content; the value of the alt attribute provides equivalent content for those who
cannot process images or who have image loading disabled (i.e. it is the img
element's fallback content).
Support: srcsetChrome for Android 57+Chrome 38+UC Browser for Android 11.4+iOS Safari 9.0+Firefox 38+IE NoneSamsung Internet 4+Opera Mini NoneAndroid Browser 56+Edge NoneSafari 9+Opera 25+
Source: caniuse.com
The requirements on the alt attribute's value are described
in a separate section.
The src attribute must be present, and must contain a
valid non-empty URL potentially surrounded by spaces referencing a non-interactive,
optionally animated, image resource that is neither paged nor scripted.
The requirements above imply that images can be static bitmaps (e.g. PNGs, GIFs, JPEGs), single-page vector documents (single-page PDFs, XML files with an SVG document element), animated bitmaps (APNGs, animated GIFs), animated vector graphics (XML files with an SVG document element that use declarative SMIL animation), and so forth. However, these definitions preclude SVG files with script, multipage PDF files, interactive MNG files, HTML documents, plain text documents, and so forth. [PNG] [GIF] [JPEG] [PDF] [XML] [APNG] [SVG] [MNG]
The srcset attribute may also be present, and is a
srcset attribute.
The srcset attribute and the src attribute (if width
descriptors are not used) contribute the image sources
to the source set (if no source element was selected).
If the srcset attribute is present and has any image candidate strings using a width
descriptor, the sizes attribute must also
be present, and is a sizes attribute. The sizes
attribute contributes the source size to the source set (if no
source element was selected).
The crossorigin attribute is a CORS
settings attribute. Its purpose is to allow images from third-party sites that allow
cross-origin access to be used with canvas.
The referrerpolicy attribute is a
referrer policy attribute. Its purpose is to set the referrer policy
used when fetching the image. [REFERRERPOLICY]
The img element must not be used as a layout tool. In particular, img
elements should not be used to display transparent images, as such images rarely convey meaning and
rarely add anything useful to the document.
What an img element represents depends on the src attribute and the alt
attribute.
src attribute is set and the alt attribute is set to the empty stringThe image is either decorative or supplemental to the rest of the content, redundant with some other information in the document.
If the image is available and the user agent is configured to display that image, then the element represents the element's image data.
Otherwise, the element represents nothing, and may be omitted completely from the rendering. User agents may provide the user with a notification that an image is present but has been omitted from the rendering.
src attribute is set and the alt attribute is set to a value that isn't emptyThe image is a key part of the content; the alt attribute
gives a textual equivalent or replacement for the image.
If the image is available and the user agent is configured to display that image, then the element represents the element's image data.
Otherwise, the element represents the text given by the alt attribute. User agents may provide the user with a notification
that an image is present but has been omitted from the rendering.
src attribute is set and the alt attribute is notThe image might be a key part of the content, and there is no textual equivalent of the image available.
In a conforming document, the absence of the alt attribute indicates that the image is a key part of the content
but that a textual replacement for the image was not available when the image was generated.
If the image is available and the user agent is configured to display that image, then the element represents the element's image data.
Otherwise, the user agent should display some sort of indicator that there is an image that is not being rendered, and may, if requested by the user, or if so configured, or when required to provide contextual information in response to navigation, provide caption information for the image, derived as follows:
If the image has a title attribute whose value is not
the empty string, then the value of that attribute is the caption information; abort these
steps.
If the image is a descendant of a figure element that has a child
figcaption element, and, ignoring the figcaption element and its
descendants, the figure element has no flow content descendants other
than inter-element whitespace and the img element, then the contents of the first such
figcaption element are the caption information; abort these steps.
There is no caption information.
src attribute is not set and either the alt attribute is set to the empty string or the alt attribute is not set at allThe element represents nothing.
The element represents the text given by the alt attribute.
The alt attribute does not represent advisory information.
User agents must not present the contents of the alt attribute
in the same way as content of the title attribute.
User agents may always provide the user with the option to display any image, or to prevent any image from being displayed. User agents may also apply heuristics to help the user make use of the image when the user is unable to see it, e.g. due to a visual disability or because they are using a text terminal with no graphics capabilities. Such heuristics could include, for instance, optical character recognition (OCR) of text found within the image.
While user agents are encouraged to repair cases of missing alt attributes, authors must not rely on such behavior. Requirements for providing text to act as an alternative for images are described
in detail below.
The contents of img elements, if any, are ignored for the purposes of
rendering.
The usemap attribute,
if present, can indicate that the image has an associated
image map.
The ismap
attribute, when used on an element that is a descendant of an
a element with an href attribute, indicates by its
presence that the element provides access to a server-side image
map. This affects how events are handled on the corresponding
a element.
The ismap attribute is a
boolean attribute. The attribute must not be specified
on an element that does not have an ancestor a element
with an href attribute.
The usemap and ismap attributes can result in confusing behavior when used
together with source elements with the media
attribute specified in a picture element.
The img element supports dimension
attributes.
The alt, src, srcset and sizes IDL attributes must reflect the
respective content attributes of the same name.
The crossOrigin IDL attribute must
reflect the crossorigin content attribute.
The useMap IDL attribute must
reflect the usemap content attribute.
The isMap IDL attribute must reflect
the ismap content attribute.
The referrerPolicy IDL attribute must
reflect the referrerpolicy
content attribute, limited to only known values.
width [ = value ]height [ = value ]These attributes return the actual rendered dimensions of the image, or zero if the dimensions are not known.
They can be set, to change the corresponding content attributes.
naturalWidthnaturalHeightThese attributes return the intrinsic dimensions of the image, or zero if the dimensions are not known.
completeReturns true if the image has been completely downloaded or if no image is specified; otherwise, returns false.
currentSrcReturns the image's absolute URL.
Image( [ width [, height ] ] )Returns a new img element, with the width and height attributes set to the values
passed in the relevant arguments, if applicable.
The IDL attributes width and height must return the rendered width and height of the
image, in CSS pixels, if the image is being rendered, and
is being rendered to a visual medium; or else the density-corrected intrinsic width and
height of the image, in CSS pixels, if the image has
intrinsic dimensions and is available but not being
rendered to a visual medium; or else 0, if the image is not available or does not have intrinsic dimensions. [CSS]
On setting, they must act as if they reflected the respective content attributes of the same name.
The IDL attributes naturalWidth and
naturalHeight must return the
density-corrected intrinsic width and height of the image, in CSS pixels, if the image has intrinsic dimensions and is available, or else 0. [CSS]
Spec bugs: 23581
Support: img-naturalwidth-naturalheightChrome for Android 57+Chrome 4+UC Browser for Android 11.4+iOS Safari 3.2+Firefox 2+IE 9+Samsung Internet 4+Opera Mini all+Android Browser 2.1+Edge 12+Safari 3.1+Opera 9+
Source: caniuse.com
The IDL attribute complete must return true if
any of the following conditions is true:
src attribute and the srcset attribute are omitted.
srcset attribute is omitted and the src attribute's value is the empty string.
img element is completely available.
img element is broken.
Otherwise, the attribute must return false.
The value of complete can thus change while
a script is executing.
The currentSrc IDL attribute
must return the img element's current request's current URL.
A constructor is provided for creating HTMLImageElement objects (in addition to
the factory methods from DOM such as createElement()): Image(width, height). When invoked,
the constructor must perform the following steps:
Let document be the current global object's associated Document.
Let img be the result of creating an
element given document, img, and the HTML
namespace.
If width is given, then set
an attribute value for img using "width"
and width.
If height is given, then set an attribute value for img
using "height" and height.
Return img.
A single image can have different appropriate alternative text depending on the context.
In each of the following cases, the same image is used, yet the alt text is different each time. The image is the coat of arms of the
Carouge municipality in the canton Geneva in Switzerland.
Here it is used as a supplementary icon:
<p>I lived in <img src="carouge.svg" alt=""> Carouge.</p>
Here it is used as an icon representing the town:
<p>Home town: <img src="carouge.svg" alt="Carouge"></p>
Here it is used as part of a text on the town:
<p>Carouge has a coat of arms.</p> <p><img src="carouge.svg" alt="The coat of arms depicts a lion, sitting in front of a tree."></p> <p>It is used as decoration all over the town.</p>
Here it is used as a way to support a similar text where the description is given as well as, instead of as an alternative to, the image:
<p>Carouge has a coat of arms.</p> <p><img src="carouge.svg" alt=""></p> <p>The coat of arms depicts a lion, sitting in front of a tree. It is used as decoration all over the town.</p>
Here it is used as part of a story:
<p>She picked up the folder and a piece of paper fell out.</p> <p><img src="carouge.svg" alt="Shaped like a shield, the paper had a red background, a green tree, and a yellow lion with its tongue hanging out and whose tail was shaped like an S."></p> <p>She stared at the folder. S! The answer she had been looking for all this time was simply the letter S! How had she not seen that before? It all came together now. The phone call where Hector had referred to a lion's tail, the time Maria had stuck her tongue out...</p>
Here it is not known at the time of publication what the image will be, only that it will be a
coat of arms of some kind, and thus no replacement text can be provided, and instead only a brief
caption for the image is provided, in the title attribute:
<p>The last user to have uploaded a coat of arms uploaded this one:</p> <p><img src="last-uploaded-coat-of-arms.cgi" title="User-uploaded coat of arms."></p>
Ideally, the author would find a way to provide real replacement text even in this case, e.g. by asking the previous user. Not providing replacement text makes the document more difficult to use for people who are unable to view images, e.g. blind users, or users or very low-bandwidth connections or who pay by the byte, or users who are forced to use a text-only Web browser.
Here are some more examples showing the same picture used in different contexts, with different appropriate alternate texts each time.
<article> <h1>My cats</h1> <h2>Fluffy</h2> <p>Fluffy is my favorite.</p> <img src="fluffy.jpg" alt="She likes playing with a ball of yarn."> <p>She's just too cute.</p> <h2>Miles</h2> <p>My other cat, Miles just eats and sleeps.</p> </article>
<article> <h1>Photography</h1> <h2>Shooting moving targets indoors</h2> <p>The trick here is to know how to anticipate; to know at what speed and what distance the subject will pass by.</p> <img src="fluffy.jpg" alt="A cat flying by, chasing a ball of yarn, can be photographed quite nicely using this technique."> <h2>Nature by night</h2> <p>To achieve this, you'll need either an extremely sensitive film, or immense flash lights.</p> </article>
<article> <h1>About me</h1> <h2>My pets</h2> <p>I've got a cat named Fluffy and a dog named Miles.</p> <img src="fluffy.jpg" alt="Fluffy, my cat, tends to keep itself busy."> <p>My dog Miles and I like go on long walks together.</p> <h2>music</h2> <p>After our walks, having emptied my mind, I like listening to Bach.</p> </article>
<article> <h1>Fluffy and the Yarn</h1> <p>Fluffy was a cat who liked to play with yarn. She also liked to jump.</p> <aside><img src="fluffy.jpg" alt="" title="Fluffy"></aside> <p>She would play in the morning, she would play in the evening.</p> </article>
This section is non-normative.
To embed an image in HTML, when there is only a single image resource, use the img
element and its src attribute.
<h2>From today's featured article</h2> <img src="/uploads/100-marie-lloyd.jpg" alt="" width="100" height="150"> <p><b><a href="/wiki/Marie_Lloyd">Marie Lloyd</a></b> (1870–1922) was an English <a href="/wiki/Music_hall">music hall</a> singer, ...
However, there are a number of situations for which the author might wish to use multiple image resources that the user agent can choose from:
Different users might have different environmental characteristics:
The users' physical screen size might be different from one another.
A mobile phone's screen might be 4 inches diagonally, while a laptop's screen might be 14 inches diagonally.
This is only relevant when an image's rendered size depends on the viewport size.
The users' screen pixel density might be different from one another.
A mobile phone's screen might have three times as many physical pixels per inch compared to another mobile phone's screen, regardless of their physical screen size.
The users' zoom level might be different from one another, or might change for a single user over time.
A user might zoom in to a particular image to be able to get a more detailed look.
The zoom level and the screen pixel density (the previous point) can both affect the number of physical screen pixels per CSS pixel. This ratio is usually referred to as device-pixel-ratio.
The users' screen orientation might be different from one another, or might change for a single user over time.
A tablet can be held upright or rotated 90 degrees, so that the screen is either "portrait" or "landscape".
The users' network speed, network latency and bandwidth cost might be different from one another, or might change for a single user over time.
A user might be on a fast, low-latency and constant-cost connection while at work, on a slow, low-latency and constant-cost connection while at home, and on a variable-speed, high-latency and variable-cost connection anywhere else.
Authors might want to show the same image content but with different rendered size depending on, usually, the width of the viewport. This is usually referred to as viewport-based selection.
A Web page might have a banner at the top that always spans the entire viewport width. In this case, the rendered size of the image depends on the physical size of the screen (assuming a maximised browser window).
Another Web page might have images in columns, with a single column for screens with a small physical size, two columns for screens with medium physical size, and three columns for screens with big physical size, with the images varying in rendered size in each case to fill up the viewport. In this case, the rendered size of an image might be bigger in the one-column layout compared to the two-column layout, despite the screen being smaller.
Authors might want to show different image content depending on the rendered size of the image. This is usually referred to as art direction.
When a Web page is viewed on a screen with a large physical size (assuming a maximised browser window), the author might wish to include some less relevant parts surrounding the critical part of the image. When the same Web page is viewed on a screen with a small physical size, the author might wish to show only the critical part of the image.
Authors might want to show the same image content but using different image formats, depending on which image formats the user agent supports. This is usually referred to as image format-based selection.
A Web page might have some images in the JPEG, WebP and JPEG XR image formats, with the latter two having better compression abilities compared to JPEG. Since different user agents can support different image formats, with some formats offering better compression ratios, the author would like to serve the better formats to user agents that support them, while providing JPEG fallback for user agents that don't.
The above situations are not mutually exclusive. For example, it is reasonable to combine different resources for different device-pixel-ratio with different resources for art direction.
While it is possible to solve these problems using scripting, doing so introduces some other problems:
Some user agents aggressively download images specified in the HTML markup, before scripts have had a chance to run, so that Web pages complete loading sooner. If a script changes which image to download, the user agent will potentially start two separate downloads, which can instead cause worse page loading performance.
If the author avoids specifying any image in the HTML markup and instead instantiates a single download from script, that avoids the double download problem above but then no image will be downloaded at all for users with scripting disabled and the aggressive image downloading optimization will also be disabled.
With this in mind, this specification introduces a number of features to address the above problems in a declarative manner.
The src and srcset
attributes on the img element can be used, using the x
descriptor, to provide multiple images that only vary in their size (the smaller image is a
scaled-down version of the bigger image).
The x descriptor is not appropriate when the rendered
size of the image depends on the viewport width
(viewport-based selection), but can be used together with
art direction.
<h2>From today's featured article</h2>
<img src="/uploads/100-marie-lloyd.jpg"
srcset="/uploads/150-marie-lloyd.jpg 1.5x, /uploads/200-marie-lloyd.jpg 2x"
alt="" width="100" height="150">
<p><b><a href="/wiki/Marie_Lloyd">Marie Lloyd</a></b> (1870–1922)
was an English <a href="/wiki/Music_hall">music hall</a> singer, ...
The user agent can choose any of the given resources depending on the user's screen's pixel density, zoom level, and possibly other factors such as the user's network conditions.
For backwards compatibility with older user agents that don't yet understand the srcset attribute, one of the URLs is specified in the
img element's src attribute. This will result
in something useful (though perhaps lower-resolution than the user would like) being displayed
even in older user agents. For new user agents, the src
attribute participates in the resource selection, as if it was specified in srcset with a 1x descriptor.
The image's rendered size is given in the width and
height attributes, which allows the user agent to
allocate space for the image before it is downloaded.
The srcset and sizes attributes can be used, using the w
descriptor, to provide multiple images that only vary in their size (the smaller image is a
scaled-down version of the bigger image).
In this example, a banner image takes up the entire viewport width (using appropriate CSS).
<h1><img sizes="100vw" srcset="wolf-400.jpg 400w, wolf-800.jpg 800w, wolf-1600.jpg 1600w"
src="wolf-400.jpg" alt="The rad wolf"></h1>
The user agent will calculate the effective pixel density of each image from the specified
w descriptors and the specified rendered size in the sizes attribute. It can then choose any of the given resources
depending on the user's screen's pixel density, zoom level, and possibly other factors such as
the user's network conditions.
If the user's screen is 320 CSS pixels wide, this is equivalent
to specifying wolf-400.jpg 1.25x, wolf-800.jpg 2.5x, wolf-1600.jpg 5x.
On the other hand, if the user's screen is 1200 CSS pixels wide,
this is equivalent to specifying wolf-400.jpg 0.33x, wolf-800.jpg 0.67x, wolf-1600.jpg 1.33x. By using the
w descriptors and the sizes
attribute, the user agent can choose the correct image source to download regardless of how
large the user's device is.
For backwards compatibility, one of the URLs is specified in the img element's
src attribute. In new user agents, the src attribute is ignored when the srcset attribute uses w descriptors.
In this example, the Web page has three layouts depending on the width of the
viewport. The narrow layout has one column of images (the width of each image is
about 100%), the middle layout has two columns of images (the width of each image is about
50%), and the widest layout has three columns of images, and some page margin (the width of
each image is about 33%). It breaks between these layouts when the viewport is
30em wide and 50em wide, respectively.
<img sizes="(max-width: 30em) 100vw, (max-width: 50em) 50vw, calc(33vw - 100px)"
srcset="swing-200.jpg 200w, swing-400.jpg 400w, swing-800.jpg 800w, swing-1600.jpg 1600w"
src="swing-400.jpg" alt="Kettlebell Swing">
The sizes attribute sets up the layout breakpoints at
30em and 50em, and declares the image sizes
between these breakpoints to be 100vw, 50vw, or
calc(33vw - 100px). These sizes do not necessarily have to match up
exactly with the actual image width as specified in the CSS.
The user agent will pick a width from the sizes
attribute, using the first item with a <media-condition> (the part in
parentheses) that evaluates to true, or using the last item (calc(33vw -
100px)) if they all evaluate to false.
For example, if the viewport width is 29em, then (max-width: 30em) evaluates to true and 100vw is used,
so the image size, for the purpose of resource selection, is 29em. If
the viewport width is instead 32em, then
(max-width: 30em) evaluates to false, but
(max-width: 50em) evaluates to true
and 50vw is used, so the image size, for the purpose of resource
selection, is 16em (half the viewport width). Notice that
the slightly wider viewport results in a smaller image because of the different
layout.
The user agent can then calculate the effective pixel density and choose an appropriate resource similarly to the previous example.
The picture element and the source element, together with the media attribute, can be used, to provide multiple images that
vary the image content (for instance the smaller image might be a cropped version of the bigger
image).
<picture> <source media="(min-width: 45em)" srcset="large.jpg"> <source media="(min-width: 32em)" srcset="med.jpg"> <img src="small.jpg" alt="The wolf runs through the snow."> </picture>
The user agent will choose the first source element for which the media query
in the media attribute matches, and then choose an
appropriate URL from its srcset attribute.
The rendered size of the image varies depending on which resource is chosen. To specify dimensions that the user agent can use before having downloaded the image, CSS can be used.
img { width: 300px; height: 300px }
@media (min-width: 32em) { img { width: 500px; height:300px } }
@media (min-width: 45em) { img { width: 700px; height:400px } }
This example combines art direction- and device-pixel-ratio-based selection. A banner that takes half the viewport is provided in two versions, one for wide screens and one for narrow screens.
<h1> <picture> <source media="(max-width: 500px)" srcset="banner-phone.jpeg, banner-phone-HD.jpeg 2x"> <img src="banner.jpeg" srcset="banner-HD.jpeg 2x" alt="The Breakfast Combo"> </picture> </h1>
The type attribute on the source element
can be used, to provide multiple images in different formats.
<h2>From today's featured article</h2> <picture> <source srcset="/uploads/100-marie-lloyd.webp" type="image/webp"> <source srcset="/uploads/100-marie-lloyd.jxr" type="image/vnd.ms-photo"> <img src="/uploads/100-marie-lloyd.jpg" alt="" width="100" height="150"> </picture> <p><b><a href="/wiki/Marie_Lloyd">Marie Lloyd</a></b> (1870–1922) was an English <a href="/wiki/Music_hall">music hall</a> singer, ...
In this example, the user agent will choose the first source that has a type attribute with a supported MIME type. If the user agent
supports WebP images, the first source element will be chosen. If not, but the
user agent does support JPEG XR images, the second source element will be chosen.
If neither of those formats are supported, the img element will be chosen.
This section is non-normative.
CSS and media queries can be used to construct graphical page layouts that adapt dynamically to
the user's environment, in particular to different viewport dimensions and pixel
densities. For content, however, CSS does not help; instead, we have the img element's
srcset attribute and the picture element.
This section walks through a sample case showing how to use these features.
Consider a situation where on wide screens (wider than 600 CSS
pixels) a 300×150 image named a-rectangle.png is to be used,
but on smaller screens (600 CSS pixels and less), a smaller
100×100 image called a-square.png is to be used. The markup for this
would look like this:
<figure> <picture> <source srcset="a-square.png" media="(max-width: 600px)"> <img src="a-rectangle.png" alt="Barney Frank wears a suit and glasses."> </picture> <figcaption>Barney Frank, 2011</figcaption> </figure>
For details on what to put in the alt
attribute, see the Requirements for providing text to act as an alternative for
images section.
The problem with this is that the user agent does not necessarily know what dimensions to use for the image when the image is loading. To avoid the layout having to be reflowed multiple times as the page is loading, CSS and CSS media queries can be used to provide the dimensions:
<style>
#a { width: 300px; height: 150px; }
@media (max-width: 600px) { #a { width: 100px; height: 100px; } }
</style>
<figure>
<picture>
<source srcset="a-square.png" media="(max-width: 600px)">
<img src="a-rectangle.png" alt="Barney Frank wears a suit and glasses." id="a">
</picture>
<figcaption>Barney Frank, 2011</figcaption>
</figure>
Alternatively, the width and height attributes can be used to provide the width for legacy user
agents, using CSS just for the user agents that support picture:
<style media="(max-width: 600px)">
#a { width: 100px; height: 100px; }
</style>
<figure>
<picture>
<source srcset="a-square.png" media="(max-width: 600px)">
<img src="a-rectangle.png" width="300" height="150"
alt="Barney Frank wears a suit and glasses." id="a">
</picture>
<figcaption>Barney Frank, 2011</figcaption>
</figure>
The img element is used with the src attribute,
which gives the URL of the image to use for legacy user agents that do not support the
picture element. This leads to a question of which image to provide in the src attribute.
If the author wants the biggest image in legacy user agents, the markup could be as follows:
<picture> <source srcset="pear-mobile.jpeg" media="(max-width: 720px)"> <source srcset="pear-tablet.jpeg" media="(max-width: 1280px)"> <img src="pear-desktop.jpeg" alt="The pear is juicy."> </picture>
However, if legacy mobile user agents are more important, one can list all three images in the
source elements, overriding the src attribute
entirely.
<picture> <source srcset="pear-mobile.jpeg" media="(max-width: 720px)"> <source srcset="pear-tablet.jpeg" media="(max-width: 1280px)"> <source srcset="pear-desktop.jpeg"> <img src="pear-mobile.jpeg" alt="The pear is juicy."> </picture>
Since at this point the src attribute is actually being
ignored entirely by picture-supporting user agents, the src attribute can default to any image, including one that is neither
the smallest nor biggest:
<picture> <source srcset="pear-mobile.jpeg" media="(max-width: 720px)"> <source srcset="pear-tablet.jpeg" media="(max-width: 1280px)"> <source srcset="pear-desktop.jpeg"> <img src="pear-tablet.jpeg" alt="The pear is juicy."> </picture>
Above the max-width media feature is used, giving the maximum
(viewport) dimensions that an image is intended for. It is also possible to use min-width instead.
<picture> <source srcset="pear-desktop.jpeg" media="(min-width: 1281px)"> <source srcset="pear-tablet.jpeg" media="(min-width: 721px)"> <img src="pear-mobile.jpeg" alt="The pear is juicy."> </picture>
source and img elementsA srcset attribute is an attribute with requirements defined in this section.
If present, its value must consist of one or more image candidate strings, each separated from the next by a U+002C COMMA character (,). If an image candidate string contains no descriptors and no ASCII whitespace after the URL, the following image candidate string, if there is one, must begin with one or more ASCII whitespace.
An image candidate string consists of the following components, in order, with the further restrictions described below this list:
Zero or more ASCII whitespace.
A valid non-empty URL that does not start or end with a U+002C COMMA character (,), referencing a non-interactive, optionally animated, image resource that is neither paged nor scripted.
Zero or more ASCII whitespace.
Zero or one of the following:
A width descriptor, consisting of: ASCII whitespace, a valid non-negative integer giving a number greater than zero representing the width descriptor value, and a U+0077 LATIN SMALL LETTER W character.
A pixel density descriptor, consisting of: ASCII whitespace, a valid floating-point number giving a number greater than zero representing the pixel density descriptor value, and a U+0078 LATIN SMALL LETTER X character.
Zero or more ASCII whitespace.
There must not be an image candidate string for an element that has the same width descriptor value as another image candidate string's width descriptor value for the same element.
There must not be an image candidate string for an element that has the same
pixel density descriptor value as another image candidate string's
pixel density descriptor value for the same element. For the purpose of this
requirement, an image candidate string with no descriptors is equivalent to an
image candidate string with a 1x descriptor.
If an image candidate string for an element has the width descriptor specified, all other image candidate strings for that element must also have the width descriptor specified.
The specified width in an image candidate string's width descriptor must match the intrinsic width in the resource given by the image candidate string's URL, if it has an intrinsic width.
If an element has a srcset attribute present, all image candidate strings for that element must have the width descriptor specified.
A sizes attribute is an attribute with requirements defined in this section.
If present, the value must be a valid source size list.
A valid source size list is a string that matches the following grammar: [CSSVALUES] [MQ]
<source-size-list> = [ <source-size># , ]? <source-size-value> <source-size> = <media-condition> <source-size-value> <source-size-value> = <length>
A <source-size-value> must not be negative, and must not use CSS functions other than the 'calc()' function.
The <source-size-value> gives the intended layout width of the image. The author can specify different widths for different environments with <media-condition>s.
Percentages are not allowed in a <source-size-value>, to avoid confusion about what it would be relative to. The 'vw' unit can be used for sizes relative to the viewport width.
The task source for the tasks queued by algorithms in this section is the DOM manipulation task source.
An img element has a current request and a pending request.
The current request is initially set to a new image request.
The pending request is initially set to null.
The current request is usually referred to as the img element itself.
Spec bugs: 27484
An image request has a state, current URL and image data.
An image request's state is one of the following:
An image request's current URL is initially the empty string.
An image request's image data is the decoded image data.
When an image request is either in the partially available state or in the completely available state, it is said to be available.
When an img element is in the completely available
state and the user agent can decode the media data without errors, then the
img element is said to be fully decodable.
An image request is initially unavailable.
When an img element is available,
it provides a paint source
whose width is the image's density-corrected intrinsic width (if any),
whose height is the image's density-corrected intrinsic height (if any),
and whose appearance is the intrinsic appearance of the image.
An img element is said to use srcset or
picture if it has a srcset attribute
specified or if it has a parent that is a picture element.
Each img element has a last selected source, which must initially be
null.
Each image request has a current pixel density, which must initially be undefined.
When an img element has a current pixel density that is not 1.0, the
element's image data must be treated as if its resolution, in device pixels per CSS pixels, was the current pixel density. The image's
density-corrected intrinsic width and height are the intrinsic width and height after taking into account the current pixel
density.
For example, if the current pixel density is 3.125, that means that there are 300 device pixels per CSS inch, and thus if the image data is 300x600, it has intrinsic dimensions of 96 CSS pixels by 192 CSS pixels.
An img element is associated with a source set.
A source set is an ordered set of zero or more image sources and a source size.
An image source is a URL, and optionally either a pixel density descriptor, or a width descriptor.
A source size is a <source-size-value>.
When a source size has a unit relative to the viewport,
it must be interpreted relative to the img element's node document's
viewport.
Other units must be interpreted the same as in Media Queries. [MQ]
A parse error for algorithms in this section indicates a non-fatal mismatch between input and requirements. User agents are encouraged to expose parse errors somehow.
Whether the image is fetched successfully or not (e.g. whether the response status was an ok status) must be ignored when determining the image's type and whether it is a valid image.
This allows servers to return images with error responses, and have them displayed.
The user agent should apply the image sniffing rules to determine the type of the image, with the image's associated Content-Type headers giving the official type. If these rules are not applied, then the type of the image must be the type given by the image's associated Content-Type headers.
User agents must not support non-image resources with the img element (e.g. XML
files whose document element is an HTML element). User agents must not run executable
code (e.g. scripts) embedded in the image resource. User agents must only display the first page
of a multipage resource (e.g. a PDF file). User agents must not allow the resource to act in an
interactive fashion, but should honour any animation in the resource.
This specification does not specify which image types are to be supported.
In a browsing context where scripting is disabled, user agents may obtain images immediately or on demand. In a browsing context where scripting is enabled, user agents must obtain images immediately.
A user agent that obtains images immediately must synchronously
update the image data of an img element,
with the restart animation flag set if so stated,
whenever that element is created or has experienced relevant mutations.
A user agent that obtains images on demand must update the image data of an
img element whenever it needs the image data (i.e. on demand),
but only if the img element is in the
unavailable state. When an img element
has experienced relevant mutations, if the user
agent only obtains images on demand, the img element must return to the unavailable state.
The relevant mutations for an img element are as follows:
The element's src, srcset, width, or sizes attributes are set, changed, or removed.
The element's src attribute is set to the same value as the previous value.
This must set the restart animation flag for the update the image data algorithm.
The element's crossorigin attribute's state is changed.
The element is inserted into or
removed from a picture parent element.
The element's parent is a picture element and a source element is inserted as a previous sibling.
The element's parent is a picture element and a source element
that was a previous sibling is removed.
The element's parent is a picture element and a source element
that is a previous sibling has its srcset, sizes, media, or type attributes set, changed, or removed.
The element's adopting steps are run.
Each Document object must have a list of available images. Each image
in this list is identified by a tuple consisting of an absolute URL, a CORS
settings attribute mode, and, if the mode is not No
CORS, an origin.
Each image furthermore has an ignore higher-layer caching flag.
User agents may copy entries from one Document
object's list of available images to another at any time (e.g. when the
Document is created, user agents can add to it all the images that are loaded in
other Documents), but must not change the keys of entries copied in this way when
doing so, and must unset the ignore higher-layer caching flag for the copied entry.
User agents may also remove images from such lists at any time (e.g. to save
memory).
User agents must remove entries in the list of available images as appropriate
given higher-layer caching semantics for the resource (e.g. the HTTP `Cache-Control` response header) when the ignore
higher-layer caching flag is unset.
The list of available images is intended to enable synchronous
switching when changing the src attribute to a URL that has
previously been loaded, and to avoid re-downloading images in the same document even when they
don't allow caching per HTTP. It is not used to avoid re-downloading the same image while the
previous image is still loading.
The user agent can also store the image data separately from the list of available images.
For example, if a resource has the HTTP response header
`Cache-Control: must-revalidate`, and its ignore higher-layer
caching flag is unset, the user agent would remove it from the list of available
images but could keep the image data separately, and use that if the server responds with a
304 Not Modified status.
When the user agent is to update the image data of an img element,
optionally with the restart animations flag set,
it must run the following steps:
If the element's node document is not the active document, then:
Continue running this algorithm in parallel.
Wait until the element's node document is the active document.
If another instance of this algorithm for this img element was started after this instance
(even if it aborted and is no longer running), then abort these steps.
Queue a microtask to continue this algorithm.
If the user agent cannot support images, or its support for images has been disabled, then abort the image request for the current request and the pending request, set current request to the unavailable state, let pending request be null, and abort these steps.
If the element does not use srcset or picture,
and it has a src attribute specified and
its value is not the empty string, let selected source be the value of the
element's src attribute, and selected pixel
density be 1.0. Otherwise, let selected source be null and selected pixel density be undefined.
Let the img element's last selected source be selected source.
If selected source is not null, then:
Parse selected source, relative to the element's node document. If that is not successful, then abort this inner set of steps. Otherwise, let urlString be the resulting URL string.
Let key be a tuple consisting of urlString, the img
element's crossorigin attribute's mode, and, if that
mode is not No CORS, the node
document's origin.
If the list of available images contains an entry for key, then:
Set the ignore higher-layer caching flag for that entry.
Abort the image request for the current request and the pending request.
Let pending request be null.
Let current request be a new image request whose image data is that of the entry and whose state is set to the completely available state.
Update the presentation of the image appropriately.
Let the current request's current pixel density be selected pixel density.
Queue a task to restart the animation if restart
animation is set, change current request's current URL to urlString, and then fire an event named load
at the img element.
Abort the update the image data algorithm.
Await a stable state, allowing the task that invoked this algorithm to continue. The synchronous section consists of all the remaining steps of this algorithm until the algorithm says the synchronous section has ended. (Steps in synchronous sections are marked with ⌛.)
⌛ If another instance of this algorithm for this img element was started
after this instance (even if it aborted and is no longer running), then abort these steps.
Only the last instance takes effect, to avoid multiple requests when, for
example, the src, srcset,
and crossorigin attributes are all set in
succession.
⌛ Let selected source and selected pixel density be the URL and pixel density that results from selecting an image source, respectively.
⌛ If selected source is null, then:
⌛ Set the current request to the broken state, abort the image request for the current request and the pending request, and let pending request be null.
⌛ Queue a task to change the current request's current URL to the empty string, and then, if the element has a
src attribute or it uses srcset or picture, fire an event named error
at the img element.
⌛ Abort this algorithm.
⌛ Queue a task to fire a progress event named loadstart at
the img element.
⌛ Parse selected source, relative to the element's node document, and let urlString be the resulting URL string. If that is not successful, then:
⌛ Abort the image request for the current request and the pending request.
⌛ Set the current request to the broken state.
⌛ Let pending request be null.
⌛ Queue a task to change the current request's current URL to selected source, fire an event named error
at the img element and then fire an event
named loadend at the img element.
⌛ Abort the update the image data algorithm.
⌛ If the pending request is not null, and urlString is the same as the pending request's current URL, then abort these steps.
⌛ If urlString is the same as the current request's current URL, and current request is in the partially available state, then abort the image request for the pending request, queue a task to restart the animation if restart animation is set, and abort these steps.
⌛ If the pending request is not null, abort the image request for the pending request.
⌛ Let image request be a new image request whose current URL is urlString.
⌛ If current request is in the unavailable state or the broken state, let the current request be image request. Otherwise, let the pending request be image request.
⌛ Let request be the result of creating a potential-CORS request given
urlString, "image", and the current state of the element's
crossorigin content attribute.
⌛ Set request's client to the
element's node document's Window object's environment settings
object and type to "image".
⌛ If the element uses srcset or
picture, set request's initiator to "imageset".
⌛ Set request's
referrer policy to the current state of
the element's referrerpolicy attribute.
⌛ Fetch request. Let this instance of the fetching algorithm be associated with image request.
The resource obtained in this fashion, if any, is image request's image data.
It can be either CORS-same-origin or CORS-cross-origin; this affects
the origin of the image itself (e.g. when used on a canvas).
Fetching the image must delay the load event of the element's node document until the task that is queued by the networking task source once the resource has been fetched (defined below) has been run.
This, unfortunately, can be used to perform a rudimentary port scan of the user's local network (especially in conjunction with scripting, though scripting isn't actually necessary to carry out such an attack). User agents may implement cross-origin access control policies that are stricter than those described above to mitigate this attack, but unfortunately such policies are typically not compatible with existing Web content.
If the resource is CORS-same-origin, each task
that is queued by the networking task source
while the image is being fetched, if image request is the current
request, must fire a progress event named progress at the img element.
End the synchronous section, continuing the remaining steps in parallel, but without missing any data from fetching.
As soon as possible, jump to the first applicable entry from the following list:
multipart/x-mixed-replaceThe next task that is queued by the networking task source while the image is being fetched must run the following steps:
If image request is the pending request and at least one body part has been completely decoded, abort the image request for the current request, upgrade the pending request to the current request.
Otherwise, if image request is the pending request and the user agent is able to determine that image request's image is corrupted in some fatal way such that the image dimensions cannot be obtained, abort the image request for the current request, upgrade the pending request to the current request and set the current request's state to broken.
Otherwise, if image request is the current request, it is in the unavailable state, and the user agent is able to determine image request's image's width and height, set the current request's state to partially available.
Otherwise, if image request is the current request, it is in the unavailable state, and the user agent is able to determine that image request's image is corrupted in some fatal way such that the image dimensions cannot be obtained, set the current request's state to broken.
Each task that is queued by the networking task source while the image is being
fetched must update the presentation of the image, but as each new body part comes in, it must
replace the previous image. Once one body part has been completely decoded, the user agent
must set the img element to the completely
available state and queue a task to fire
an event named load at the img
element.
The progress and loadend events are not fired for
multipart/x-mixed-replace image streams.
The next task that is queued by the networking task source while the image is being fetched must run the following steps:
If the user agent is able to determine image request's image's width and height, and image request is pending request, set image request's state to partially available.
Otherwise, if the user agent is able to determine image request's image's width and height,
and image request is current request,
update the img element's presentation appropriately
and set image request's state to partially available.
Otherwise, if the user agent is able to determine that image request's image
is corrupted in some fatal way such that the image dimensions cannot be obtained, and
image request is pending request, abort the image
request for the current request and the pending request,
upgrade the pending request to the current request, set current
request to the broken state, fire an event named error at the img element, fire an event named loadend at the img element, and abort these
steps.
Otherwise, if the user agent is able to determine that image request's image
is corrupted in some fatal way such that the image dimensions cannot be obtained, and
image request is current request, abort the image
request for image request, fire an
event named error at the img element,
fire an event named loadend at the img element, and abort these
steps.
That task, and each subsequent task, that is queued by the networking task source while the image is being fetched, if image request is the current request, must update the presentation of the image appropriately (e.g., if the image is a progressive JPEG, each packet can improve the resolution of the image).
Furthermore, the last task that is queued by the networking task source once the resource has been fetched must additionally run these steps:
If image request is the pending request,
abort the image request for the current request,
upgrade the pending request to the current request and
update the img element's presentation appropriately.
Set image request to the completely available state.
Add the image to the list of available images using the key key, with the ignore higher-layer caching flag set.
Fire a progress event or event named load
at the img element, depending on the resource in image request.
Fire a progress event or event named loadend
at the img element, depending on the resource in image request.
The image data is not in a supported file format; the user agent must set image
request to the broken state, abort the image
request for the current request and the pending request,
upgrade the pending request to the current request if image request is
the pending request, and then queue a task to first fire an event named error
at the img element and then fire an
event named loadend at the img
element.
While a user agent is running the above algorithm for an element x, there must be a strong reference from the element's node document to the element x, even if that element is not connected.
To abort the image request for an image request image request means to run the following steps:
Forget image request's image data, if any.
Abort any instance of the fetching algorithm for image request, discarding any pending tasks generated by that algorithm.
To upgrade the pending request to the current request for an img element means to run the following steps:
Let the img element's current request be the pending request.
Let the img element's pending request be null.
To fire a progress event or event named type at an element e, depending on resource r, means to fire a progress event named type at e if r is CORS-same-origin, and otherwise fire an event named type at e.
When asked to select an image source for a given img element el,
user agents must do the following:
Update the source set for el.
If el's source set is empty, return null as the URL and undefined as the pixel density and abort these steps.
Otherwise, take el's source set and let it be source set.
If an entry b in source set has the same associated pixel density descriptor as an earlier entry a in source set, then remove entry b. Repeat this step until none of the entries in source set have the same associated pixel density descriptor as an earlier entry.
In a user agent-specific manner, choose one image source from source set. Let this be selected source.
Return selected source and its associated pixel density.
When asked to update the source set for a given img element el,
user agents must do the following:
Set el's source set to an empty source set.
If el has a parent node and that is a picture element,
let elements be an array containing el's parent node's child elements, retaining relative order.
Otherwise, let elements be array containing only el.
If el has a width attribute, and parsing
that attribute's value using the rules for parsing dimension values doesn't generate
an error or a percentage value, then let width be the returned integer value.
Otherwise, let width be null.
Iterate through elements, doing the following for each item child:
If child is el:
If child has a srcset attribute,
parse child's srcset attribute
and let the returned source set be source set.
Otherwise, let source set be an empty source set.
Parse child's sizes attribute with the fallback width width, and let source set's source size be the returned value.
If child has a src attribute
whose value is not the empty string
and source set does not contain an
image source with a pixel density descriptor value of 1,
and no image source with a width descriptor,
append child's src attribute value to source set.
Normalize the source densities of source set.
Let el's source set be source set.
Abort this algorithm.
If child is not a source element, continue to the next child.
Otherwise, child is a source element.
If child does not have a srcset
attribute, continue to the next child.
Parse child's srcset attribute and let the returned source set be source set.
If source set has zero image sources, continue to the next child.
If child has a media attribute, and
its value does not match the environment,
continue to the next child.
Parse child's sizes attribute with the fallback width width, and let source set's source size be the returned value.
If child has a type attribute, and its
value is an unknown or unsupported MIME type, continue to the next child.
Normalize the source densities of source set.
Let el's source set be source set.
Abort this algorithm.
Each img element independently considers its previous sibling
source elements plus the img element itself for selecting an image
source, ignoring any other (invalid) elements, including other img elements in
the same picture element, or source elements that are following siblings
of the relevant img element.
When asked to parse a srcset attribute from an element, parse the value of the element's srcset attribute as follows:
Let input be the value passed to this algorithm.
Let position be a pointer into input, initially pointing at the start of the string.
Let candidates be an initially empty source set.
Splitting loop: Collect a sequence of code points that are ASCII whitespace or U+002C COMMA characters from input given position. If any U+002C COMMA characters were collected, that is a parse error.
If position is past the end of input, return candidates and abort these steps.
Collect a sequence of code points that are not ASCII whitespace from input given position, and let that be url.
Let descriptors be a new empty list.
If url ends with U+002C (,), then:
Remove all trailing U+002C COMMA characters from url. If this removed more than one character, that is a parse error.
Otherwise, while true:
Descriptor tokenizer: Skip ASCII whitespace within input given position.
Let current descriptor be the empty string.
Let state be in descriptor.
Let c be the character at position. Do the following depending on the value of state. For the purpose of this step, "EOF" is a special character representing that position is past the end of input.
Do the following, depending on the value of c:
If current descriptor is not empty, append current descriptor to descriptors and let current descriptor be the empty string. Set state to after descriptor.
Advance position to the next character in input. If current descriptor is not empty, append current descriptor to descriptors. Jump to the step labeled descriptor parser.
Append c to current descriptor. Set state to in parens.
If current descriptor is not empty, append current descriptor to descriptors. Jump to the step labeled descriptor parser.
Append c to current descriptor.
Do the following, depending on the value of c:
Append c to current descriptor. Set state to in descriptor.
Append current descriptor to descriptors. Jump to the step labeled descriptor parser.
Append c to current descriptor.
Do the following, depending on the value of c:
Stay in this state.
Jump to the step labeled descriptor parser.
Set state to in descriptor. Set position to the previous character in input.
Advance position to the next character in input.
In order to be compatible with future additions, this algorithm supports multiple descriptors and descriptors with parens.
Descriptor parser: Let error be no.
Let width be absent.
Let density be absent.
Let future-compat-h be absent.
For each descriptor in descriptors, run the appropriate set of steps from the following list:
If the user agent does not support the sizes attribute,
let error be yes.
A conforming user agent will support the sizes attribute.
However, user agents typically implement and ship features in an incremental manner in practice.
If width and density are not both absent, then let error be yes.
Apply the rules for parsing non-negative integers to the descriptor. If the result is zero, let error be yes. Otherwise, let width be the result.
If width, density and future-compat-h are not all absent, then let error be yes.
Apply the rules for parsing floating-point number values to the descriptor. If the result is less than zero, let error be yes. Otherwise, let density be the result.
If density is zero, the intrinsic dimensions will be infinite. User agents are expected to have limits in how big images can be rendered, which is allowed by the hardware limitations clause.
This is a parse error.
If future-compat-h and density are not both absent, then let error be yes.
Apply the rules for parsing non-negative integers to the descriptor. If the result is zero, let error be yes. Otherwise, let future-compat-h be the result.
Let error be yes.
If future-compat-h is not absent and width is absent, let error be yes.
If error is still no, then append a new image source to candidates whose URL is url, associated with a width width if not absent and a pixel density density if not absent. Otherwise, there is a parse error.
Return to the step labeled splitting loop.
When asked to parse a sizes attribute from an element, with a fallback width width, parse a comma-separated list of component values from the value of the element's sizes attribute (or the empty string, if the attribute is absent), and let unparsed sizes list be the result. [CSSSYNTAX]
For each unparsed size in unparsed sizes list:
Remove all consecutive <whitespace-token>s from the end of unparsed size. If unparsed size is now empty, that is a parse error; continue to the next iteration of this algorithm.
If the last component value in unparsed size is a valid non-negative <source-size-value>, let size be its value and remove the component value from unparsed size. Any CSS function other than the 'calc()' function is invalid. Otherwise, there is a parse error; continue to the next iteration of this algorithm.
Remove all consecutive <whitespace-token>s from the end of unparsed size. If unparsed size is now empty, return size and exit this algorithm. If this was not the last item in unparsed sizes list, that is a parse error.
Parse the remaining component values in unparsed size as a <media-condition>. If it does not parse correctly, or it does parse correctly but the <media-condition> evaluates to false, continue to the next iteration of this algorithm. [MQ]
Return size and exit this algorithm.
If the above algorithm exhausts unparsed sizes list without returning a size value, follow these steps:
While a valid source size list only contains a bare <source-size-value> (without an accompanying <media-condition>) as the last entry in the <source-size-list>, the parsing algorithm technically allows such at any point in the list, and will accept it immediately as the size if the preceding entries in the list weren't used. This is to enable future extensions, and protect against simple author errors such as a final trailing comma.
An image source can have a pixel density descriptor, a width descriptor, or no descriptor at all accompanying its URL. Normalizing a source set gives every image source a pixel density descriptor.
When asked to normalize the source densities of a source set source set, the user agent must do the following:
Let source size be source set's source size.
For each image source in source set:
If the image source has a pixel density descriptor, continue to the next image source.
Otherwise, if the image source has a width descriptor, replace the width
descriptor with a pixel density descriptor with a value of the width descriptor value divided by the source size and a unit
of x.
If the source size is zero, the density would be infinity, which results in the intrinsic dimensions being zero by zero.
Otherwise, give the image source a pixel density descriptor of 1x.
The user agent may at any time run the following algorithm to update an img
element's image in order to react to changes in the environment. (User agents are not
required to ever run this algorithm; for example, if the user is not looking at the page any
more, the user agent might want to wait until the user has returned to the page before determining
which image to use, in case the environment changes again in the meantime.)
User agents are encouraged to run this algorithm in particular when the user changes
the viewport's size (e.g. by resizing the window or changing the page zoom), and when
an img element is inserted into a
document, so that the density-corrected intrinsic width and height match the
new viewport, and so that the correct image is chosen when art direction
is involved.
Await a stable state. The synchronous section consists of all the remaining steps of this algorithm until the algorithm says the synchronous section has ended. (Steps in synchronous sections are marked with ⌛.)
⌛ If the img element does not use srcset or
picture, its node document is not the active
document, has image data whose resource type is multipart/x-mixed-replace, or
the pending request is not null, then abort this algorithm.
⌛ Let selected source and selected pixel density be the URL and pixel density that results from selecting an image source, respectively.
⌛ If selected source is null, then abort these steps.
⌛ If selected source and selected pixel density are the same as the element's last selected source and current pixel density, then abort these steps.
⌛ Parse selected source, relative to the element's node document, and let urlString be the resulting URL string. If that is not successful, abort these steps.
⌛ Let corsAttributeState be the state of the element's crossorigin content attribute.
⌛ Let origin be the origin of the img element's node document.
⌛ Let client be the img element's node
document's Window object's environment settings object.
⌛ Let key be a tuple consisting of urlString, corsAttributeState, and, if corsAttributeState is not No CORS, origin.
⌛ Let image request be a new image request whose current URL is urlString
⌛ Let the element's pending request be image request.
End the synchronous section, continuing the remaining steps in parallel.
If the list of available images contains an entry for key, then set image request's image data to that of the entry. Continue to the next step.
Otherwise:
Let request be the result of creating a potential-CORS request given
urlString, "image", and
corsAttributeState.
Set request's client to
client, type to "image", initiator to "imageset", and set request's synchronous
flag.
Set request's
referrer policy to the current state of
the element's referrerpolicy attribute.
Let response be the result of fetching request.
If response's unsafe response is a network error or
if the image format is unsupported (as determined by applying the image sniffing rules, again as mentioned earlier),
or if the user agent is able to determine that image request's image is corrupted in
some fatal way such that the image dimensions cannot be obtained, or if the resource type is
multipart/x-mixed-replace, then let pending request be null and abort
these steps.
Otherwise, response's unsafe response is image
request's image data. It can be either
CORS-same-origin or CORS-cross-origin; this affects the
origin of the image itself (e.g., when used on a canvas).
Queue a task to run these steps:
If the img element has experienced relevant mutations
since this algorithm started, then let pending request be null and abort these steps.
Let the img element's last selected source be selected source
and the img element's current pixel density be selected pixel density.
Set image request to the completely available state.
Add the image to the list of available images using the key key, with the ignore higher-layer caching flag set.
Update the img element's presentation appropriately.
Fire an event named load at the img element.
Except where otherwise specified, the alt attribute must be
specified and its value must not be empty; the value must be an appropriate replacement for the
image. The specific requirements for the alt attribute depend on
what the image is intended to represent, as described in the following sections.
The most general rule to consider when writing alternative text is the following: the
intent is that replacing every image with the text of its alt
attribute not change the meaning of the page.
So, in general, alternative text can be written by considering what one would have written had one not been able to include the image.
A corollary to this is that the alt attribute's value should
never contain text that could be considered the image's caption, title, or
legend. It is supposed to contain replacement text that could be used by users
instead of the image; it is not meant to supplement the image. The title attribute can be used for supplemental information.
Another corollary is that the alt attribute's value should
not repeat information that is already provided in the prose next to the image.
One way to think of alternative text is to think about how you would read the page containing the image to someone over the phone, without mentioning that there is an image present. Whatever you say instead of the image is typically a good start for writing the alternative text.
When an a element that creates a hyperlink, or a button
element, has no textual content but contains one or more images, the alt attributes must contain text that together convey the purpose of
the link or button.
In this example, a user is asked to pick their preferred color from a list of three. Each color is given by an image, but for users who have configured their user agent not to display images, the color names are used instead:
<h1>Pick your color</h1> <ul> <li><a href="green.html"><img src="green.jpeg" alt="Green"></a></li> <li><a href="blue.html"><img src="blue.jpeg" alt="Blue"></a></li> <li><a href="red.html"><img src="red.jpeg" alt="Red"></a></li> </ul>
In this example, each button has a set of images to indicate the kind of color output desired by the user. The first image is used in each case to give the alternative text.
<button name="rgb"><img src="red" alt="RGB"><img src="green" alt=""><img src="blue" alt=""></button> <button name="cmyk"><img src="cyan" alt="CMYK"><img src="magenta" alt=""><img src="yellow" alt=""><img src="black" alt=""></button>
Since each image represents one part of the text, it could also be written like this:
<button name="rgb"><img src="red" alt="R"><img src="green" alt="G"><img src="blue" alt="B"></button> <button name="cmyk"><img src="cyan" alt="C"><img src="magenta" alt="M"><img src="yellow" alt="Y"><img src="black" alt="K"></button>
However, with other alternative text, this might not work, and putting all the alternative text into one image in each case might make more sense:
<button name="rgb"><img src="red" alt="sRGB profile"><img src="green" alt=""><img src="blue" alt=""></button> <button name="cmyk"><img src="cyan" alt="CMYK profile"><img src="magenta" alt=""><img src="yellow" alt=""><img src="black" alt=""></button>
Sometimes something can be more clearly stated in graphical form, for example as a flowchart, a
diagram, a graph, or a simple map showing directions. In such cases, an image can be given using
the img element, but the lesser textual version must still be given, so that users
who are unable to view the image (e.g. because they have a very slow connection, or because they
are using a text-only browser, or because they are listening to the page being read out by a
hands-free automobile voice Web browser, or simply because they are blind) are still able to
understand the message being conveyed.
The text must be given in the alt attribute, and must convey
the same message as the image specified in the src
attribute.
It is important to realize that the alternative text is a replacement for the image, not a description of the image.
In the following example we have a flowchart
in image form, with text in the alt attribute rephrasing the
flowchart in prose form:
<p>In the common case, the data handled by the tokenization stage comes from the network, but it can also come from script.</p> <p><img src="images/parsing-model-overview.png" alt="The Network passes data to the Input Stream Preprocessor, which passes it to the Tokenizer, which passes it to the Tree Construction stage. From there, data goes to both the DOM and to Script Execution. Script Execution is linked to the DOM, and, using document.write(), passes data to the Tokenizer."></p>
Here's another example, showing a good solution and a bad solution to the problem of including an image in a description.
First, here's the good solution. This sample shows how the alternative text should just be what you would have put in the prose if the image had never existed.
<!-- This is the correct way to do things. --> <p> You are standing in an open field west of a house. <img src="house.jpeg" alt="The house is white, with a boarded front door."> There is a small mailbox here. </p>
Second, here's the bad solution. In this incorrect way of doing things, the alternative text is simply a description of the image, instead of a textual replacement for the image. It's bad because when the image isn't shown, the text doesn't flow as well as in the first example.
<!-- This is the wrong way to do things. --> <p> You are standing in an open field west of a house. <img src="house.jpeg" alt="A white house, with a boarded front door."> There is a small mailbox here. </p>
Text such as "Photo of white house with boarded door" would be equally bad alternative text
(though it could be suitable for the title attribute or in the
figcaption element of a figure with this image).
A document can contain information in iconic form. The icon is intended to help users of visual browsers to recognize features at a glance.
In some cases, the icon is supplemental to a text label conveying the same meaning. In those
cases, the alt attribute must be present but must be empty.
Here the icons are next to text that conveys the same meaning, so they have an empty alt attribute:
<nav> <p><a href="/help/"><img src="/icons/help.png" alt=""> Help</a></p> <p><a href="/configure/"><img src="/icons/configuration.png" alt=""> Configuration Tools</a></p> </nav>
In other cases, the icon has no text next to it describing what it means; the icon is supposed
to be self-explanatory. In those cases, an equivalent textual label must be given in the alt attribute.
Here, posts on a news site are labeled with an icon indicating their topic.
<body> <article> <header> <h1>Ratatouille wins <i>Best Movie of the Year</i> award</h1> <p><img src="movies.png" alt="Movies"></p> </header> <p>Pixar has won yet another <i>Best Movie of the Year</i> award, making this its 8th win in the last 12 years.</p> </article> <article> <header> <h1>Latest TWiT episode is online</h1> <p><img src="podcasts.png" alt="Podcasts"></p> </header> <p>The latest TWiT episode has been posted, in which we hear several tech news stories as well as learning much more about the iPhone. This week, the panelists compare how reflective their iPhones' Apple logos are.</p> </article> </body>
Many pages include logos, insignia, flags, or emblems, which stand for a particular entity such as a company, organization, project, band, software package, country, or some such.
If the logo is being used to represent the entity, e.g. as a page heading, the alt attribute must contain the name of the entity being represented by
the logo. The alt attribute must not contain text like
the word "logo", as it is not the fact that it is a logo that is being conveyed, it's the entity
itself.
If the logo is being used next to the name of the entity that it represents, then the logo is
supplemental, and its alt attribute must instead be empty.
If the logo is merely used as decorative material (as branding, or, for example, as a side image in an article that mentions the entity to which the logo belongs), then the entry below on purely decorative images applies. If the logo is actually being discussed, then it is being used as a phrase or paragraph (the description of the logo) with an alternative graphical representation (the logo itself), and the first entry above applies.
In the following snippets, all four of the above cases are present. First, we see a logo used to represent a company:
<h1><img src="XYZ.gif" alt="The XYZ company"></h1>
Next, we see a paragraph which uses a logo right next to the company name, and so doesn't have any alternative text:
<article> <h2>News</h2> <p>We have recently been looking at buying the <img src="alpha.gif" alt=""> ΑΒΓ company, a small Greek company specializing in our type of product.</p>
In this third snippet, we have a logo being used in an aside, as part of the larger article discussing the acquisition:
<aside><p><img src="alpha-large.gif" alt=""></p></aside> <p>The ΑΒΓ company has had a good quarter, and our pie chart studies of their accounts suggest a much bigger blue slice than its green and orange slices, which is always a good sign.</p> </article>
Finally, we have an opinion piece talking about a logo, and the logo is therefore described in detail in the alternative text.
<p>Consider for a moment their logo:</p> <p><img src="/images/logo" alt="It consists of a green circle with a green question mark centered inside it."></p> <p>How unoriginal can you get? I mean, oooooh, a question mark, how <em>revolutionary</em>, how utterly <em>ground-breaking</em>, I'm sure everyone will rush to adopt those specifications now! They could at least have tried for some sort of, I don't know, sequence of rounded squares with varying shades of green and bold white outlines, at least that would look good on the cover of a blue book.</p>
This example shows how the alternative text should be written such that if the image isn't available, and the text is used instead, the text flows seamlessly into the surrounding text, as if the image had never been there in the first place.
Sometimes, an image just consists of text, and the purpose of the image is not to highlight the actual typographic effects used to render the text, but just to convey the text itself.
In such cases, the alt attribute must be present but must
consist of the same text as written in the image itself.
Consider a graphic containing the text "Earth Day", but with the letters all decorated with flowers and plants. If the text is merely being used as a heading, to spice up the page for graphical users, then the correct alternative text is just the same text "Earth Day", and no mention need be made of the decorations:
<h1><img src="earthdayheading.png" alt="Earth Day"></h1>
An illuminated manuscript might use graphics for some of its images. The alternative text in such a situation is just the character that the image represents.
<p><img src="initials/o.svg" alt="O">nce upon a time and a long long time ago, late at night, when it was dark, over the hills, through the woods, across a great ocean, in a land far away, in a small house, on a hill, under a full moon...
When an image is used to represent a character that cannot otherwise be represented in Unicode, for example gaiji, itaiji, or new characters such as novel currency symbols, the alternative text should be a more conventional way of writing the same thing, e.g. using the phonetic hiragana or katakana to give the character's pronunciation.
In this example from 1997, a new-fangled currency symbol that looks like a curly E with two bars in the middle instead of one is represented using an image. The alternative text gives the character's pronunciation.
<p>Only <img src="euro.png" alt="euro ">5.99!
An image should not be used if characters would serve an identical purpose. Only when the text cannot be directly represented using text, e.g., because of decorations or because there is no appropriate character (as in the case of gaiji), would an image be appropriate.
If an author is tempted to use an image because their default system font does not support a given character, then Web Fonts are a better solution than images.
In many cases, the image is actually just supplementary, and its presence merely reinforces the
surrounding text. In these cases, the alt attribute must be
present but its value must be the empty string.
In general, an image falls into this category if removing the image doesn't make the page any less useful, but including the image makes it a lot easier for users of visual browsers to understand the concept.
A flowchart that repeats the previous paragraph in graphical form:
<p>The Network passes data to the Input Stream Preprocessor, which passes it to the Tokenizer, which passes it to the Tree Construction stage. From there, data goes to both the DOM and to Script Execution. Script Execution is linked to the DOM, and, using document.write(), passes data to the Tokenizer.</p> <p><img src="images/parsing-model-overview.png" alt=""></p>
In these cases, it would be wrong to include alternative text that consists of just a caption.
If a caption is to be included, then either the title attribute
can be used, or the figure and figcaption elements can be used. In the
latter case, the image would in fact be a phrase or paragraph with an alternative graphical
representation, and would thus require alternative text.
<!-- Using the title="" attribute -->
<p>The Network passes data to the Input Stream Preprocessor, which
passes it to the Tokenizer, which passes it to the Tree Construction
stage. From there, data goes to both the DOM and to Script Execution.
Script Execution is linked to the DOM, and, using document.write(),
passes data to the Tokenizer.</p>
<p><img src="images/parsing-model-overview.png" alt=""
title="Flowchart representation of the parsing model."></p>
<!-- Using <figure> and <figcaption> --> <p>The Network passes data to the Input Stream Preprocessor, which passes it to the Tokenizer, which passes it to the Tree Construction stage. From there, data goes to both the DOM and to Script Execution. Script Execution is linked to the DOM, and, using document.write(), passes data to the Tokenizer.</p> <figure> <img src="images/parsing-model-overview.png" alt="The Network leads to the Input Stream Preprocessor, which leads to the Tokenizer, which leads to the Tree Construction stage. The Tree Construction stage leads to two items. The first is Script Execution, which leads via document.write() back to the Tokenizer. The second item from which Tree Construction leads is the DOM. The DOM is related to the Script Execution."> <figcaption>Flowchart representation of the parsing model.</figcaption> </figure>
<!-- This is WRONG. Do not do this. Instead, do what the above examples do. -->
<p>The Network passes data to the Input Stream Preprocessor, which
passes it to the Tokenizer, which passes it to the Tree Construction
stage. From there, data goes to both the DOM and to Script Execution.
Script Execution is linked to the DOM, and, using document.write(),
passes data to the Tokenizer.</p>
<p><img src="images/parsing-model-overview.png"
alt="Flowchart representation of the parsing model."></p>
<!-- Never put the image's caption in the alt="" attribute! -->
A graph that repeats the previous paragraph in graphical form:
<p>According to a study covering several billion pages, about 62% of documents on the Web in 2007 triggered the Quirks rendering mode of Web browsers, about 30% triggered the Almost Standards mode, and about 9% triggered the Standards mode.</p> <p><img src="rendering-mode-pie-chart.png" alt=""></p>
Sometimes, an image is not critical to the content, but is nonetheless neither purely
decorative nor entirely redundant with the text. In these cases, the alt attribute must be present, and its value should either be the
empty string, or a textual representation of the information that the image conveys. If the image
has a caption giving the image's title, then the alt
attribute's value must not be empty (as that would be quite confusing for non-visual readers).
Consider a news article about a political figure, in which the individual's face was shown in an image that, through a style sheet, is floated to the right. The image is not purely decorative, as it is relevant to the story. The image is not entirely redundant with the story either, as it shows what the politician looks like. Whether any alternative text need be provided is an authoring decision, in part influenced by whether the image colors the interpretation of the prose.
In this first variant, the image is shown without context, and no alternative text is provided:
<p><img src="alexsalmond.jpeg" alt=""> Ahead of today's referendum, the First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond, wrote an open letter to all registered voters. In it, he admitted that all countries make mistakes.</p>
If the picture is just a face, there might be no value in describing it. It's of no interest to the reader whether the individual has red hair or blond hair, whether the individual has white skin or black skin, whether the individual has one eye or two eyes.
However, if the picture is more dynamic, for instance showing the politician as angry, or particularly happy, or devastated, some alternative text would be useful in setting the tone of the article, a tone that might otherwise be missed:
<p><img src="alexsalmond.jpeg" alt="Alex Salmond is sad."> Ahead of today's referendum, the First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond, wrote an open letter to all registered voters. In it, he admitted that all countries make mistakes.</p>
<p><img src="alexsalmond.jpeg" alt="Alex Salmond is ecstatic!"> Ahead of today's referendum, the First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond, wrote an open letter to all registered voters. In it, he admitted that all countries make mistakes.</p>
Whether the individual was "sad" or "ecstatic" makes a difference to how the rest of the paragraph is to be interpreted: is he likely saying that he is resigned to the populace making a bad choice in the upcoming referendum, or is he saying that the election was a mistake but the likely turnout will make it irrelevant? The interpretation varies based on the image.
If the image has a caption, then including alternative text avoids leaving the non-visual user confused as to what the caption refers to.
<p>Ahead of today's referendum, the First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond,
wrote an open letter to all registered voters. In it, he admitted that all
countries make mistakes.</p>
<figure>
<img src="alexsalmond.jpeg"
alt="A high forehead, cheerful disposition, and dark hair round out Alex Salmond's face.">
<figcaption> Alex Salmond, SNP. Photo © 2014 PolitiPhoto. </figcaption>
</figure>
If an image is decorative but isn't especially page-specific — for example an image that forms part of a site-wide design scheme — the image should be specified in the site's CSS, not in the markup of the document.
However, a decorative image that isn't discussed by the surrounding text but still has some
relevance can be included in a page using the img element. Such images are
decorative, but still form part of the content. In these cases, the alt attribute must be present but its value must be the empty
string.
Examples where the image is purely decorative despite being relevant would include things like a photo of the Black Rock City landscape in a blog post about an event at Burning Man, or an image of a painting inspired by a poem, on a page reciting that poem. The following snippet shows an example of the latter case (only the first verse is included in this snippet):
<h1>The Lady of Shalott</h1> <p><img src="shalott.jpeg" alt=""></p> <p>On either side the river lie<br> Long fields of barley and of rye,<br> That clothe the wold and meet the sky;<br> And through the field the road run by<br> To many-tower'd Camelot;<br> And up and down the people go,<br> Gazing where the lilies blow<br> Round an island there below,<br> The island of Shalott.</p>
When a picture has been sliced into smaller image files that are then displayed together to
form the complete picture again, one of the images must have its alt attribute set as per the relevant rules that would be appropriate
for the picture as a whole, and then all the remaining images must have their alt attribute set to the empty string.
In the following example, a picture representing a company logo for XYZ Corp has been split into two pieces, the first containing the letters "XYZ" and the second with the word "Corp". The alternative text ("XYZ Corp") is all in the first image.
<h1><img src="logo1.png" alt="XYZ Corp"><img src="logo2.png" alt=""></h1>
In the following example, a rating is shown as three filled stars and two empty stars. While the alternative text could have been "★★★☆☆", the author has instead decided to more helpfully give the rating in the form "3 out of 5". That is the alternative text of the first image, and the rest have blank alternative text.
<p>Rating: <meter max=5 value=3><img src="1" alt="3 out of 5" ><img src="1" alt=""><img src="1" alt=""><img src="0" alt="" ><img src="0" alt=""></meter></p>
Generally, image maps should be used instead of slicing an image for links.
However, if an image is indeed sliced and any of the components of the sliced picture are the
sole contents of links, then one image per link must have alternative text in its alt attribute representing the purpose of the link.
In the following example, a picture representing the flying spaghetti monster emblem, with each of the left noodly appendages and the right noodly appendages in different images, so that the user can pick the left side or the right side in an adventure.
<h1>The Church</h1> <p>You come across a flying spaghetti monster. Which side of His Noodliness do you wish to reach out for?</p> <p><a href="?go=left" ><img src="fsm-left.png" alt="Left side. "></a ><img src="fsm-middle.png" alt="" ><a href="?go=right"><img src="fsm-right.png" alt="Right side."></a></p>
In some cases, the image is a critical part of the content. This could be the case, for instance, on a page that is part of a photo gallery. The image is the whole point of the page containing it.
How to provide alternative text for an image that is a key part of the content depends on the image's provenance.
When it is possible for detailed alternative text to be provided, for example if the image is
part of a series of screenshots in a magazine review, or part of a comic strip, or is a
photograph in a blog entry about that photograph, text that can serve as a substitute for the
image must be given as the contents of the alt attribute.
A screenshot in a gallery of screenshots for a new OS, with some alternative text:
<figure>
<img src="KDE%20Light%20desktop.png"
alt="The desktop is blue, with icons along the left hand side in
two columns, reading System, Home, K-Mail, etc. A window is
open showing that menus wrap to a second line if they
cannot fit in the window. The window has a list of icons
along the top, with an address bar below it, a list of
icons for tabs along the left edge, a status bar on the
bottom, and two panes in the middle. The desktop has a bar
at the bottom of the screen with a few buttons, a pager, a
list of open applications, and a clock.">
<figcaption>Screenshot of a KDE desktop.</figcaption>
</figure>
A graph in a financial report:
<img src="sales.gif"
title="Sales graph"
alt="From 1998 to 2005, sales increased by the following percentages
with each year: 624%, 75%, 138%, 40%, 35%, 9%, 21%">
Note that "sales graph" would be inadequate alternative text for a sales graph. Text that would be a good caption is not generally suitable as replacement text.
In certain cases, the nature of the image might be such that providing thorough alternative text is impractical. For example, the image could be indistinct, or could be a complex fractal, or could be a detailed topographical map.
In these cases, the alt attribute must contain some
suitable alternative text, but it may be somewhat brief.
Sometimes there simply is no text that can do justice to an image. For example, there is little that can be said to usefully describe a Rorschach inkblot test. However, a description, even if brief, is still better than nothing:
<figure> <img src="/commons/a/a7/Rorschach1.jpg" alt="A shape with left-right symmetry with indistinct edges, with a small gap in the center, two larger gaps offset slightly from the center, with two similar gaps under them. The outline is wider in the top half than the bottom half, with the sides extending upwards higher than the center, and the center extending below the sides."> <figcaption>A black outline of the first of the ten cards in the Rorschach inkblot test.</figcaption> </figure>
Note that the following would be a very bad use of alternative text:
<!-- This example is wrong. Do not copy it. --> <figure> <img src="/commons/a/a7/Rorschach1.jpg" alt="A black outline of the first of the ten cards in the Rorschach inkblot test."> <figcaption>A black outline of the first of the ten cards in the Rorschach inkblot test.</figcaption> </figure>
Including the caption in the alternative text like this isn't useful because it effectively duplicates the caption for users who don't have images, taunting them twice yet not helping them any more than if they had only read or heard the caption once.
Another example of an image that defies full description is a fractal, which, by definition, is infinite in detail.
The following example shows one possible way of providing alternative text for the full view of an image of the Mandelbrot set.
<img src="ms1.jpeg" alt="The Mandelbrot set appears as a cardioid with its cusp on the real axis in the positive direction, with a smaller bulb aligned along the same center line, touching it in the negative direction, and with these two shapes being surrounded by smaller bulbs of various sizes.">
Similarly, a photograph of a person's face, for example in a biography, can be considered quite relevant and key to the content, but it can be hard to fully substitute text for:
<section class="bio"> <h1>A Biography of Isaac Asimov</h1> <p>Born <b>Isaak Yudovich Ozimov</b> in 1920, Isaac was a prolific author.</p> <p><img src="headpics/asimov.jpeg" alt="Isaac Asimov had dark hair, a tall forehead, and wore glasses. Later in life, he wore long white sideburns."> <p>Asimov was born in Russia, and moved to the US when he was three years old.</p> <p>... </section>
In such cases it is unnecessary (and indeed discouraged) to include a reference to the presence of the image itself in the alternative text, since such text would be redundant with the browser itself reporting the presence of the image. For example, if the alternative text was "A photo of Isaac Asimov", then a conforming user agent might read that out as "(Image) A photo of Isaac Asimov" rather than the more useful "(Image) Isaac Asimov had dark hair, a tall forehead, and wore glasses...".
In some unfortunate cases, there might be no alternative text available at all, either because the image is obtained in some automated fashion without any associated alternative text (e.g. a Webcam), or because the page is being generated by a script using user-provided images where the user did not provide suitable or usable alternative text (e.g. photograph sharing sites), or because the author does not themself know what the images represent (e.g. a blind photographer sharing an image on their blog).
In such cases, the alt attribute may be omitted, but one of
the following conditions must be met as well:
The img element is in a
figure element that contains a figcaption element that contains
content other than inter-element whitespace, and, ignoring the
figcaption element and its descendants, the figure element has no
flow content descendants other than inter-element whitespace and the
img element.
The title attribute is present and has a non-empty
value.
Relying on the title attribute is currently
discouraged as many user agents do not expose the attribute in an accessible manner as
required by this specification (e.g. requiring a pointing device such as a mouse to cause a
tooltip to appear, which excludes keyboard-only users and touch-only users, such as anyone
with a modern phone or tablet).
Such cases are to be kept to an absolute minimum. If there is even the slightest
possibility of the author having the ability to provide real alternative text, then it would not
be acceptable to omit the alt attribute.
A photo on a photo-sharing site, if the site received the image with no metadata other than the caption, could be marked up as follows:
<figure> <img src="1100670787_6a7c664aef.jpg"> <figcaption>Bubbles traveled everywhere with us.</figcaption> </figure>
It would be better, however, if a detailed description of the important parts of the image obtained from the user and included on the page.
A blind user's blog in which a photo taken by the user is shown. Initially, the user might not have any idea what the photo they took shows:
<article> <h1>I took a photo</h1> <p>I went out today and took a photo!</p> <figure> <img src="photo2.jpeg"> <figcaption>A photograph taken blindly from my front porch.</figcaption> </figure> </article>
Eventually though, the user might obtain a description of the image from their friends and could then include alternative text:
<article> <h1>I took a photo</h1> <p>I went out today and took a photo!</p> <figure> <img src="photo2.jpeg" alt="The photograph shows my squirrel feeder hanging from the edge of my roof. It is half full, but there are no squirrels around. In the background, out-of-focus trees fill the shot. The feeder is made of wood with a metal grate, and it contains peanuts. The edge of the roof is wooden too, and is painted white with light blue streaks."> <figcaption>A photograph taken blindly from my front porch.</figcaption> </figure> </article>
Sometimes the entire point of the image is that a textual description is not available, and
the user is to provide the description. For instance, the point of a CAPTCHA image is to see if
the user can literally read the graphic. Here is one way to mark up a CAPTCHA (note the title attribute):
<p><label>What does this image say? <img src="captcha.cgi?id=8934" title="CAPTCHA"> <input type=text name=captcha></label> (If you cannot see the image, you can use an <a href="?audio">audio</a> test instead.)</p>
Another example would be software that displays images and asks for alternative text precisely for the purpose of then writing a page with correct alternative text. Such a page could have a table of images, like this:
<table> <thead> <tr> <th> Image <th> Description <tbody> <tr> <td> <img src="2421.png" title="Image 640 by 100, filename 'banner.gif'"> <td> <input name="alt2421"> <tr> <td> <img src="2422.png" title="Image 200 by 480, filename 'ad3.gif'"> <td> <input name="alt2422"> </table>
Notice that even in this example, as much useful information as possible is still included
in the title attribute.
Since some users cannot use images at all (e.g. because they have a very slow
connection, or because they are using a text-only browser, or because they are listening to the
page being read out by a hands-free automobile voice Web browser, or simply because they are
blind), the alt attribute is only allowed to be omitted rather
than being provided with replacement text when no alternative text is available and none can be
made available, as in the above examples. Lack of effort from the part of the author is not an
acceptable reason for omitting the alt attribute.
Generally authors should avoid using img elements for purposes other than showing
images.
If an img element is being used for purposes other than showing an image, e.g. as
part of a service to count page views, then the alt attribute
must be the empty string.
In such cases, the width and height attributes should both be set to zero.
This section does not apply to documents that are publicly accessible, or whose target audience is not necessarily personally known to the author, such as documents on a Web site, e-mails sent to public mailing lists, or software documentation.
When an image is included in a private communication (such as an HTML e-mail) aimed at a
specific person who is known to be able to view images, the alt
attribute may be omitted. However, even in such cases authors are strongly urged to include
alternative text (as appropriate according to the kind of image involved, as described in the
above entries), so that the e-mail is still usable should the user use a mail client that does not
support images, or should the document be forwarded on to other users whose abilities might not
include easily seeing images.
Markup generators (such as WYSIWYG authoring tools) should, wherever possible, obtain alternative text from their users. However, it is recognized that in many cases, this will not be possible.
For images that are the sole contents of links, markup generators should examine the link target to determine the title of the target, or the URL of the target, and use information obtained in this manner as the alternative text.
For images that have captions, markup generators should use the figure and
figcaption elements, or the title attribute, to
provide the image's caption.
As a last resort, implementors should either set the alt
attribute to the empty string, under the assumption that the image is a purely decorative image
that doesn't add any information but is still specific to the surrounding content, or omit the
alt attribute altogether, under the assumption that the image is
a key part of the content.
Markup generators may specify a generator-unable-to-provide-required-alt
attribute on img elements for which they have been unable to obtain alternative text
and for which they have therefore omitted the alt attribute. The
value of this attribute must be the empty string. Documents containing such attributes are not
conforming, but conformance checkers will silently
ignore this error.
This is intended to avoid markup generators from being pressured into replacing
the error of omitting the alt attribute with the even more
egregious error of providing phony alternative text, because state-of-the-art automated
conformance checkers cannot distinguish phony alternative text from correct alternative text.
Markup generators should generally avoid using the image's own file name as the alternative text. Similarly, markup generators should avoid generating alternative text from any content that will be equally available to presentation user agents (e.g. Web browsers).
This is because once a page is generated, it will typically not be updated, whereas the browsers that later read the page can be updated by the user, therefore the browser is likely to have more up-to-date and finely-tuned heuristics than the markup generator did when generating the page.
A conformance checker must report the lack of an alt
attribute as an error unless one of the conditions listed below applies:
The img element is in a figure element that satisfies the conditions described above.
The img element has a title attribute with a
value that is not the empty string (also as described
above).
The conformance checker has been configured to assume that the document is an e-mail or document intended for a specific person who is known to be able to view images.
The img element has a (non-conforming) generator-unable-to-provide-required-alt
attribute whose value is the empty string. A conformance checker that is not reporting the lack
of an alt attribute as an error must also not report the
presence of the empty generator-unable-to-provide-required-alt
attribute as an error. (This case does not represent a case where the document is conforming,
only that the generator could not determine appropriate alternative text — validators are
not required to show an error in this case, because such an error might encourage markup
generators to include bogus alternative text purely in an attempt to silence validators.
Naturally, conformance checkers may report the lack of an alt attribute as an error even in the presence of the generator-unable-to-provide-required-alt
attribute; for example, there could be a user option to report all conformance errors
even those that might be the more or less inevitable result of using a markup
generator.)
iframe elementSpec bugs: 28773
src — Address of the resourcesrcdoc — A document to render in the iframename — Name of nested browsing contextsandbox — Security rules for nested contentallowfullscreen — Whether to allow the iframe's contents to use requestFullscreen()allowpaymentrequest — Whether the iframe's contents are allowed to use the PaymentRequest interface to make payment requestsallowusermedia — Whether to allow the iframe's contents to use getUserMedia()width — Horizontal dimensionheight — Vertical dimensionreferrerpolicy — Referrer policy for fetches initiated by the element[HTMLConstructor]
interface HTMLIFrameElement : HTMLElement {
[CEReactions] attribute USVString src;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString srcdoc;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString name;
[SameObject, PutForwards=value] readonly attribute DOMTokenList sandbox;
[CEReactions] attribute boolean allowFullscreen;
[CEReactions] attribute boolean allowPaymentRequest;
[CEReactions] attribute boolean allowUserMedia;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString width;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString height;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString referrerPolicy;
readonly attribute Document? contentDocument;
readonly attribute WindowProxy? contentWindow;
Document? getSVGDocument();
};
The iframe element represents a nested browsing
context.
The src attribute gives the URL
of a page that the nested browsing context is to contain. The attribute, if present,
must be a valid non-empty URL potentially surrounded by spaces. If the itemprop is specified on an iframe element, then the
src attribute must also be specified.
The srcdoc attribute gives the content of the page that the
nested browsing context is to contain. The value of the attribute is the source of
an iframe srcdoc
document.
Support: iframe-srcdocChrome for Android 57+Chrome 20+UC Browser for Android 11.4+iOS Safari 6.0+Firefox 25+IE NoneSamsung Internet 4+Opera Mini NoneAndroid Browser 4.4+Safari 6+Opera 15+
Source: caniuse.com
The srcdoc attribute, if present, must have a value
using the HTML syntax that consists of the following syntactic components, in the
given order:
html element.The above requirements apply in XML documents as well.
Here a blog uses the srcdoc attribute in conjunction
with the sandbox attribute described below to provide
users of user agents that support this feature with an extra layer of protection from script
injection in the blog post comments:
<article> <h1>I got my own magazine!</h1> <p>After much effort, I've finally found a publisher, and so now I have my own magazine! Isn't that awesome?! The first issue will come out in September, and we have articles about getting food, and about getting in boxes, it's going to be great!</p> <footer> <p>Written by <a href="/users/cap">cap</a>, 1 hour ago. </footer> <article> <footer> Thirteen minutes ago, <a href="/users/ch">ch</a> wrote: </footer> <iframe sandbox srcdoc="<p>did you get a cover picture yet?"></iframe> </article> <article> <footer> Nine minutes ago, <a href="/users/cap">cap</a> wrote: </footer> <iframe sandbox srcdoc="<p>Yeah, you can see it <a href="/gallery?mode=cover&amp;page=1">in my gallery</a>."></iframe> </article> <article> <footer> Five minutes ago, <a href="/users/ch">ch</a> wrote: </footer> <iframe sandbox srcdoc="<p>hey that's earl's table. <p>you should get earl&amp;me on the next cover."></iframe> </article>
Notice the way that quotes have to be escaped (otherwise the srcdoc attribute would end prematurely), and the way raw
ampersands (e.g. in URLs or in prose) mentioned in the sandboxed content have to be
doubly escaped — once so that the ampersand is preserved when originally parsing
the srcdoc attribute, and once more to prevent the
ampersand from being misinterpreted when parsing the sandboxed content.
Furthermore, notice that since the DOCTYPE is optional in
iframe srcdoc documents, and the html,
head, and body elements have optional
start and end tags, and the title element is also optional in iframe srcdoc
documents, the markup in a srcdoc attribute can be
relatively succinct despite representing an entire document, since only the contents of the
body element need appear literally in the syntax. The other elements are still
present, but only by implication.
In the HTML syntax, authors need only remember to use U+0022
QUOTATION MARK characters (") to wrap the attribute contents and then to escape all U+0022
QUOTATION MARK (") and U+0026 AMPERSAND (&) characters, and to specify the sandbox attribute, to ensure safe embedding of content.
In XML the U+003C LESS-THAN SIGN character (<) needs to be escaped as well. In order to prevent attribute-value normalization, some of XML's whitespace characters — specifically U+0009 CHARACTER TABULATION (tab), U+000A LINE FEED (LF), and U+000D CARRIAGE RETURN (CR) — also need to be escaped. [XML]
If the src attribute and the srcdoc attribute are both specified together, the srcdoc attribute takes priority. This allows authors to provide
a fallback URL for legacy user agents that do not support the srcdoc attribute.
When an iframe element is inserted
into a document that has a browsing context, the
user agent must create a new browsing
context, set the element's nested browsing context to the newly-created
browsing context, and then process the iframe attributes
for the "first time".
When an iframe element is removed
from a document, the user agent must discard the element's nested browsing context, if it is not null,
and then set the element's nested browsing context to null.
This happens without any unload events firing
(the nested browsing context and its Document are discarded, not unloaded).
Whenever an iframe element with a non-null nested browsing context
has its srcdoc attribute set, changed, or removed, the
user agent must process the iframe attributes.
Similarly, whenever an iframe element with a non-null nested browsing
context but with no srcdoc attribute specified has
its src attribute set, changed, or removed, the user agent
must process the iframe attributes.
When the user agent is to process the iframe attributes, it must run
the first appropriate steps from the following list:
srcdoc attribute is specifiedNavigate the element's nested browsing context
to a new response whose url list consists of about:srcdoc, header list consists of `Content-Type`/`text/html, body is the value of the attribute, CSP list is the CSP list of the iframe element's node
document, HTTPS state is the HTTPS state of the iframe element's
node document.
The resulting Document must be considered an iframe srcdoc document.
src attribute
specified, and the user agent is processing the iframe's attributes for the "first
time"Queue a task to run the iframe load event steps.
The task source for this task is the DOM manipulation task source.
The otherwise steps for iframe or frame elements are as
follows:
If the element has no src attribute specified, or its
value is the empty string, let url be the URL
"about:blank".
Otherwise, parse the value of the src attribute, relative to the element's node
document.
If that is not successful, then let url be the URL
"about:blank". Otherwise, let url be the resulting URL
record.
If there exists an ancestor browsing context whose active document's URL, ignoring fragments, is equal to url, then abort these steps.
Let resource be a new request whose url is url and whose referrer policy is the current state of the
element's referrerpolicy content
attribute.
Navigate the element's nested browsing context to resource.
Any navigation required of the user agent in the process
the iframe attributes algorithm must use the iframe element's
node document's browsing context as the source browsing
context.
Furthermore, if the active document of the element's nested browsing context before such a navigation was not completely loaded at the time of the new navigation, then the navigation must be completed with replacement enabled.
Similarly, if the nested browsing context's session history contained
only one Document when the process the iframe attributes
algorithm was invoked, and that was the about:blank Document created
when the nested browsing context was created, then any navigation required of the user agent in that algorithm must be completed
with replacement enabled.
When a Document in an iframe is marked as completely
loaded, the user agent must run the iframe load event steps in parallel.
A load event is also fired at the
iframe element when it is created if no other data is loaded in it.
Each Document has an iframe load in progress flag and a mute
iframe load flag. When a Document is created, these flags must be unset for
that Document.
The iframe load event steps are as follows:
Let child document be the active document of the
iframe element's nested browsing context (which cannot be null at this
point).
If child document has its mute iframe load flag set, abort these steps.
Set child document's iframe load in progress flag.
Fire an event named load at the iframe element.
Unset child document's iframe load in progress flag.
This, in conjunction with scripting, can be used to probe the URL space of the local network's HTTP servers. User agents may implement cross-origin access control policies that are stricter than those described above to mitigate this attack, but unfortunately such policies are typically not compatible with existing Web content.
When the iframe's browsing context's active document is
not ready for post-load tasks, and when anything in the iframe is delaying the load event of the iframe's
browsing context's active document, and when the iframe's
browsing context is in the delaying load events
mode, the iframe must delay the load event of its document.
If, during the handling of the load event, the
browsing context in the iframe is again navigated, that will further delay the load event.
If, when the element is created, the srcdoc attribute is not set, and the src attribute is either also not set or set but its value cannot be
parsed, the browsing context will remain at the initial
about:blank page.
If the user navigates away from this page, the
iframe's corresponding WindowProxy object will proxy new
Window objects for new Document objects, but the src attribute will not change.
The name attribute, if present, must be a
valid browsing context name. The given value is used to name the nested
browsing context. When the browsing context is created, if the attribute
is present, the browsing context name must be set to the value of this attribute;
otherwise, the browsing context name must be set to the empty string.
Whenever the name attribute is set, the nested
browsing context's name must be changed to
the new value. If the attribute is removed, the browsing context name must be set to
the empty string.
The sandbox attribute, when specified,
enables a set of extra restrictions on any content hosted by the iframe. Its value
must be an unordered set of unique space-separated tokens that are ASCII
case-insensitive. The allowed values are allow-forms, allow-modals, allow-orientation-lock, allow-pointer-lock, allow-popups, allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox,
allow-presentation, allow-same-origin, allow-scripts, allow-top-navigation, and allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation.
Support: iframe-sandboxChrome for Android 57+Chrome 4+UC Browser for Android 11.4+iOS Safari 4.2+Firefox 28+IE 10+Samsung Internet 4+Opera Mini NoneAndroid Browser 2.2+Edge 12+Safari 5+Opera 15+
Source: caniuse.com
When the attribute is set, the content is treated as being from a unique origin,
forms, scripts, and various potentially annoying APIs are disabled, links are prevented from
targeting other browsing contexts, and plugins are secured.
The allow-same-origin keyword causes
the content to be treated as being from its real origin instead of forcing it into a unique
origin; the allow-top-navigation
keyword allows the content to navigate its top-level browsing context;
the allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation
keyword behaves similarly but only allows such navigation when
triggered by user activation; and the allow-forms, allow-modals, allow-orientation-lock, allow-pointer-lock, allow-popups, allow-presentation, allow-scripts, and allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox
keywords re-enable forms, modal dialogs, screen orientation lock, the pointer lock API, popups,
the presentation API, scripts, and the creation of unsandboxed auxiliary browsing contexts respectively. [POINTERLOCK]
[SCREENORIENTATION] [PRESENTATION]
The allow-top-navigation and allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation
keywords must not both be specified, as doing so is redundant; only allow-top-navigation will have an effect
in such non-conformant markup.
Setting both the allow-scripts and allow-same-origin keywords together when the
embedded page has the same origin as the page containing the iframe
allows the embedded page to simply remove the sandbox
attribute and then reload itself, effectively breaking out of the sandbox altogether.
These flags only take effect when the nested browsing context of
the iframe is navigated. Removing them, or removing the
entire sandbox attribute, has no effect on an
already-loaded page.
Potentially hostile files should not be served from the same server as the file
containing the iframe element. Sandboxing hostile content is of minimal help if an
attacker can convince the user to just visit the hostile content directly, rather than in the
iframe. To limit the damage that can be caused by hostile HTML content, it should be
served from a separate dedicated domain. Using a different domain ensures that scripts in the
files are unable to attack the site, even if the user is tricked into visiting those pages
directly, without the protection of the sandbox
attribute.
When an iframe element with a sandbox
attribute has its nested browsing context created (before the initial
about:blank Document is created), and when an iframe
element's sandbox attribute is set or changed while it
has a nested browsing context, the user agent must parse the sandboxing directive using the attribute's value as the
input and the iframe element's nested browsing context's
iframe sandboxing flag set as the output.
When an iframe element's sandbox
attribute is removed while it has a non-null nested browsing context, the user agent
must empty the iframe element's nested browsing context's
iframe sandboxing flag set as the output.
In this example, some completely-unknown, potentially hostile, user-provided HTML content is embedded in a page. Because it is served from a separate domain, it is affected by all the normal cross-site restrictions. In addition, the embedded page has scripting disabled, plugins disabled, forms disabled, and it cannot navigate any frames or windows other than itself (or any frames or windows it itself embeds).
<p>We're not scared of you! Here is your content, unedited:</p> <iframe sandbox src="https://usercontent.example.net/getusercontent.cgi?id=12193"></iframe>
It is important to use a separate domain so that if the attacker convinces the user to visit that page directly, the page doesn't run in the context of the site's origin, which would make the user vulnerable to any attack found in the page.
In this example, a gadget from another site is embedded. The gadget has scripting and forms enabled, and the origin sandbox restrictions are lifted, allowing the gadget to communicate with its originating server. The sandbox is still useful, however, as it disables plugins and popups, thus reducing the risk of the user being exposed to malware and other annoyances.
<iframe sandbox="allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-scripts"
src="https://maps.example.com/embedded.html"></iframe>
Suppose a file A contained the following fragment:
<iframe sandbox="allow-same-origin allow-forms" src=B></iframe>
Suppose that file B contained an iframe also:
<iframe sandbox="allow-scripts" src=C></iframe>
Further, suppose that file C contained a link:
<a href=D>Link</a>
For this example, suppose all the files were served as text/html.
Page C in this scenario has all the sandboxing flags set. Scripts are disabled, because the
iframe in A has scripts disabled, and this overrides the allow-scripts keyword set on the
iframe in B. Forms are also disabled, because the inner iframe (in B)
does not have the allow-forms keyword
set.
Suppose now that a script in A removes all the sandbox attributes in A and B.
This would change nothing immediately. If the user clicked the link in C, loading page D into the
iframe in B, page D would now act as if the iframe in B had the allow-same-origin and allow-forms keywords set, because that was the
state of the nested browsing context in the iframe in A when page B was
loaded.
Generally speaking, dynamically removing or changing the sandbox attribute is ill-advised, because it can make it quite
hard to reason about what will be allowed and what will not.
The allowfullscreen attribute is a
boolean attribute. When specified, it indicates that Document objects in
the iframe element's browsing context are to be allowed to use requestFullscreen() (if it's not blocked for other
reasons, e.g. there is another ancestor iframe without this attribute set).
Here, an iframe is used to embed a player from a video site. The allowfullscreen attribute is needed to enable the
player to show its video fullscreen.
<article> <header> <p><img src="/usericons/1627591962735"> <b>Fred Flintstone</b></p> <p><a href="/posts/3095182851" rel=bookmark>12:44</a> — <a href="#acl-3095182851">Private Post</a></p> </header> <main> <p>Check out my new ride!</p> <iframe src="https://video.example.com/embed?id=92469812" allowfullscreen></iframe> </main> </article>
The allowpaymentrequest
attribute is a boolean attribute. When specified, it indicates that
Document objects in the iframe element's browsing context
are to be allowed to use the PaymentRequest interface to make payment requests.
The allowusermedia attribute is a
boolean attribute. When specified, it indicates that Document objects in
the iframe element's browsing context are to be allowed to use getUserMedia() (if it's not blocked for other
reasons, e.g. there is another ancestor iframe without this attribute set).
To determine whether a Document object document
is allowed to use the feature indicated by attribute name
allowattribute, run these steps:
If document has no browsing context, then return false.
If document's browsing context's active document is not document, then return false.
If document's browsing context is a top-level browsing context, then return true.
If allowattribute is allowfullscreen, then:
If document's browsing context has
a browsing context container that is an iframe element with an
allowattribute attribute specified, and whose node document is
allowed to use the feature indicated by allowattribute, then return
true.
This step is legacy behavior for the allowfullscreen attribute that should not be used
for new features. If possible this will be removed, see issue 2143.
Otherwise:
If document has the allowattribute flag set, and
document's browsing context has a
browsing context container that is an iframe element whose
node document is allowed to use the feature indicated by
allowattribute, then return true.
Return false.
To set the allow* flags for a Document document means to
run these steps:
If document's browsing context has a browsing context container whose node document's origin is same origin-domain with document's origin, then set the allowpaymentrequest flag and the allowusermedia flag on document, and abort these steps.
If document.domain has been used for
the browsing context container's node document, then its
origin cannot be same origin-domain with document's
origin, because these steps run when document is initialized so it
cannot itself yet have used document.domain. Note
that this is less permissive compared to doing a same origin check instead.
In this example, the child document is not allowed to use PaymentRequest,
despite being same origin-domain at the time the child document tries to use it.
At the time the child document is initialized, only the parent document has set document.domain, and the child document has not.
<!-- https://foo.example.com/a.html --> <!doctype html> <script> document.domain = 'example.com'; </script> <iframe src=b.html></iframe>
<!-- https://bar.example.com/b.html --> <!doctype html> <script> document.domain = 'example.com'; // This happens after the document is initialized new PaymentRequest(…); // Not allowed to use </script>
In this example, the child document is allowed to use PaymentRequest,
despite not being same origin-domain at the time the child document tries to use
it. At the time the child document is initialized, none of the documents have set document.domain yet so same origin-domain
falls back to a normal same origin check.
<!-- https://example.com/a.html --> <!doctype html> <iframe src=b.html></iframe> <!-- The child document is now initialized, before the script below is run. --> <script> document.domain = 'example.com'; </script>
<!-- https://example.com/b.html --> <!doctype html> <script> new PaymentRequest(…); // Allowed to use </script>
If document's browsing context has a
browsing context container that is an iframe element, let
iframe be that element. Otherwise, abort these steps.
If iframe has an allowpaymentrequest attribute specified, then
set the allowpaymentrequest flag on document.
If iframe has an allowusermedia attribute specified, then set the
allowusermedia flag on document.
The iframe element supports dimension attributes for cases where the
embedded content has specific dimensions (e.g. ad units have well-defined dimensions).
An iframe element never has fallback content, as it will always
create a nested browsing context, regardless of whether the specified initial
contents are successfully used.
The referrerpolicy attribute is a
referrer policy attribute. Its purpose is to set the referrer policy
used when processing the iframe
attributes. [REFERRERPOLICY]
Descendants of iframe elements represent nothing. (In legacy user agents that do
not support iframe elements, the contents would be parsed as markup that could act as
fallback content.)
The HTML parser treats markup inside iframe elements as
text.
The IDL attributes src, srcdoc, name,and sandbox must reflect the respective content
attributes of the same name.
The supported tokens for sandbox's DOMTokenList are the allowed
values defined in the sandbox attribute and supported by
the user agent.
The allowFullscreen IDL attribute
must reflect the allowfullscreen
content attribute.
The allowPaymentRequest IDL
attribute must reflect the allowpaymentrequest content attribute.
The allowUserMedia IDL attribute
must reflect the allowusermedia
content attribute.
The referrerPolicy IDL attribute
must reflect the referrerpolicy
content attribute, limited to only known values.
The contentDocument IDL attribute,
on getting, must return the iframe element's content document.
The contentWindow IDL attribute must
return the WindowProxy object of the iframe element's nested
browsing context, if its nested browsing context is non-null, or null
otherwise.
Here is an example of a page using an iframe to include advertising from an
advertising broker:
<iframe src="https://ads.example.com/?customerid=923513721&format=banner"
width="468" height="60"></iframe>
embed elementsrc — Address of the resourcetype — Type of embedded resourcewidth — Horizontal dimensionheight — Vertical dimension[HTMLConstructor]
interface HTMLEmbedElement : HTMLElement {
[CEReactions] attribute USVString src;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString type;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString width;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString height;
Document? getSVGDocument();
};
Depending on the type of content instantiated by the
embed element, the node may also support other
interfaces.
The embed element provides an integration point for an external (typically
non-HTML) application or interactive content.
The src attribute gives the URL of
the resource being embedded. The attribute, if present, must contain a valid non-empty URL
potentially surrounded by spaces.
If the itemprop attribute is specified on an
embed element, then the src attribute must also
be specified.
The type attribute, if present, gives the
MIME type by which the plugin to instantiate is selected. The value must be a
valid MIME type. If both the type attribute and
the src attribute are present, then the type attribute must specify the same type as the explicit Content-Type metadata of the resource given by the src attribute.
While any of the following conditions are occurring, any plugin instantiated for
the element must be removed, and the embed element represents
nothing:
The element has neither a src attribute nor a type attribute.
The element has a media element ancestor.
The element has an ancestor object element that is not showing its
fallback content.
An embed element is said to be potentially
active when the following conditions are all met simultaneously:
src attribute set or a type attribute set (or both).src attribute is either absent or its value
is not the empty string.object element that is not showing its
fallback content.Whenever an embed element that was not potentially active becomes potentially active, and whenever a potentially active embed element that is
remaining potentially active and has its src attribute set, changed, or removed or its type attribute set, changed, or removed, the user agent must
queue a task using the embed task source to run the
embed element setup steps.
The embed element setup steps are as follows:
If another task has since been queued to run the
embed element setup steps for this element, then abort these steps.
If the Should element be blocked a priori by Content Security
Policy? algorithm returns "Blocked" when executed on the element,
then abort these steps. [CSP]
src attribute setThe user agent must parse the value of the element's
src attribute, relative to the element's node
document. If that is successful, the user agent should run these steps:
Let request be a new request whose
url is the resulting URL record,
client is the element's node
document's Window object's environment settings object,
destination is "embed", credentials
mode is "include", and whose use-URL-credentials
flag is set.
Fetch request.
The task that is queued by the networking task source once the resource has been fetched must run the following steps:
If another task has since been queued to run
the embed element setup steps for this element, then abort these
steps.
Determine the type of the content being embedded, as follows (stopping at the first substep that determines the type):
If the element has a type attribute, and that
attribute's value is a type that a plugin supports, then the value of the
type attribute is the content's type.
Otherwise, if applying the URL parser algorithm to the URL of the specified resource (after any redirects) results in a URL record whose path component matches a pattern that a plugin supports, then the content's type is the type that that plugin can handle.
For example, a plugin might say that it can handle resources with path components that end with the four character string
".swf".
Otherwise, if the specified resource has explicit Content-Type metadata, then that is the content's type.
Otherwise, the content has no type and there can be no appropriate plugin for it.
If the previous step determined that the content's
type is image/svg+xml, then run the following substeps:
If the embed element's nested browsing context is null,
set the element's nested browsing context to a newly-created browsing context, and, if the element has a name attribute, set the browsing context name
of the element's new nested browsing context to the value of this
attribute.
Navigate the nested browsing context to
the fetched resource, with replacement enabled, and with the
embed element's node document's browsing context as the source browsing
context. (The src attribute of the
embed element doesn't get updated if the browsing context gets further
navigated to other locations.)
The embed element now represents its nested browsing
context.
Otherwise, find and instantiate an appropriate plugin based on the content's type, and hand that plugin the
content of the resource, replacing any previously instantiated plugin for the element. The
embed element now represents this plugin instance.
Once the resource or plugin has completely loaded, queue a task to fire an event named load
at the element.
Whether the resource is fetched successfully or not (e.g. whether the response status was an ok status) must be ignored when determining the content's type and when handing the resource to the plugin.
This allows servers to return data for plugins even with error responses (e.g. HTTP 500 Internal Server Error codes can still contain plugin data).
Fetching the resource must delay the load event of the element's node document.
src attribute setThe user agent should find and instantiate an appropriate plugin based on the
value of the type attribute. The embed
element now represents this plugin instance.
Once the plugin is completely loaded, queue a task to fire an event named load
at the element.
The embed element has no fallback content. If the user agent can't
find a suitable plugin when attempting to find and instantiate one for the algorithm above, then
the user agent must use a default plugin. This default could be as simple as saying "Unsupported
Format".
Whenever an embed element that was potentially
active stops being potentially active, any
plugin that had been instantiated for that element must be unloaded.
When a plugin is to be instantiated but it cannot be secured and the sandboxed plugins browsing context
flag is set on the embed element's node document's active
sandboxing flag set, then the user agent must not instantiate the plugin, and
must instead render the embed element in a manner that conveys that the
plugin was disabled. The user agent may offer the user the option to override the
sandbox and instantiate the plugin anyway; if the user invokes such an option, the
user agent must act as if the conditions above did not apply for the purposes of this element.
Plugins that cannot be secured are disabled in sandboxed browsing contexts because they might not honor the restrictions imposed by the sandbox (e.g. they might allow scripting even when scripting in the sandbox is disabled). User agents should convey the danger of overriding the sandbox to the user if an option to do so is provided.
When an embed element has a non-null nested browsing context: if the
embed element's nested browsing context's active document
is not ready for post-load tasks, and when anything is delaying the load event of the embed element's browsing
context's active document, and when the embed element's
browsing context is in the delaying load
events mode, the embed must delay the load event of its
document.
The task source for the tasks mentioned in this section is the DOM manipulation task source.
Any namespace-less attribute other than name, align, hspace, and vspace may be
specified on the embed element, so long as its name is XML-compatible
and contains no ASCII upper alphas. These attributes are
then passed as parameters to the plugin.
All attributes in HTML documents get lowercased automatically, so the restriction on uppercase letters doesn't affect such documents.
The four exceptions are to exclude legacy attributes that have side-effects beyond just sending parameters to the plugin.
The user agent should pass the names and values of all the attributes of the embed
element that have no namespace to the plugin used, when one is instantiated.
The HTMLEmbedElement object representing the element must expose the scriptable
interface of the plugin instantiated for the embed element, if any.
The embed element supports dimension attributes.
The IDL attributes src and type each must reflect the respective
content attributes of the same name.
Here's a way to embed a resource that requires a proprietary plugin, like Flash:
<embed src="catgame.swf">
If the user does not have the plugin (for example if the plugin vendor doesn't support the user's platform), then the user will be unable to use the resource.
To pass the plugin a parameter "quality" with the value "high", an attribute can be specified:
<embed src="catgame.swf" quality="high">
This would be equivalent to the following, when using an object element
instead:
<object data="catgame.swf"> <param name="quality" value="high"> </object>
object elementusemap attribute: Interactive content.param elements, then, transparent.data — Address of the resourcetype — Type of embedded resourcetypemustmatch — Whether the type attribute and the Content-Type value need to match for the resource to be usedname — Name of nested browsing contextusemap — Name of image map to useform — Associates the control with a form elementwidth — Horizontal dimensionheight — Vertical dimension[HTMLConstructor]
interface HTMLObjectElement : HTMLElement {
[CEReactions] attribute USVString data;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString type;
[CEReactions] attribute boolean typeMustMatch;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString name;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString useMap;
readonly attribute HTMLFormElement? form;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString width;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString height;
readonly attribute Document? contentDocument;
readonly attribute WindowProxy? contentWindow;
Document? getSVGDocument();
readonly attribute boolean willValidate;
readonly attribute ValidityState validity;
readonly attribute DOMString validationMessage;
boolean checkValidity();
boolean reportValidity();
void setCustomValidity(DOMString error);
};
Depending on the type of content instantiated by the
object element, the node also supports other
interfaces.
The object element can represent an external resource, which, depending on the
type of the resource, will either be treated as an image, as a nested browsing
context, or as an external resource to be processed by a plugin.
The data attribute, if present, specifies the
URL of the resource. If present, the attribute must be a valid non-empty URL
potentially surrounded by spaces.
Authors who reference resources from other origins
that they do not trust are urged to use the typemustmatch attribute defined below. Without that
attribute, it is possible in certain cases for an attacker on the remote host to use the plugin
mechanism to run arbitrary scripts, even if the author has used features such as the Flash
"allowScriptAccess" parameter.
The type attribute, if present, specifies the
type of the resource. If present, the attribute must be a valid MIME type.
At least one of either the data attribute or the type attribute must be present.
If the itemprop attribute is specified on an object
element, then the data attribute must also be specified.
The typemustmatch attribute is a
boolean attribute whose presence indicates that the resource specified by the data attribute is only to be used if the value of the type attribute and the Content-Type of the
aforementioned resource match.
The typemustmatch attribute must not be
specified unless both the data attribute and the type attribute are present.
The name attribute, if present, must be a
valid browsing context name. The given value is used to name the nested
browsing context, if applicable.
Whenever one of the following conditions occur:
object elements changes to or from showing its
fallback content,
classid attribute is set, changed, or
removed,
classid attribute is not present, and
its data attribute is set, changed, or removed,
classid attribute nor its
data attribute are present, and its type attribute is set, changed, or removed,
...the user agent must queue a task to run the following steps to (re)determine
what the object element represents. This task
being queued or actively running must delay the load
event of the element's node document.
If the user has indicated a preference that this object element's fallback
content be shown instead of the element's usual behavior, then jump to the step below
labeled fallback.
For example, a user could ask for the element's fallback content to be shown because that content uses a format that the user finds more accessible.
If the element has an ancestor media element, or has an ancestor
object element that is not showing its fallback content, or
if the element is not in a document that has a browsing context, or if the element's node
document is not fully active, or if the element is still in the stack
of open elements of an HTML parser or XML parser, or if the
element is not being rendered, or if the Should element be blocked
a priori by Content Security Policy? algorithm returns "Blocked" when executed on the element, then jump to the step below labeled
fallback. [CSP]
If the classid attribute is present, and has a
value that isn't the empty string, then: if the user agent can find a plugin
suitable according to the value of the classid
attribute, and either plugins aren't being sandboxed or that
plugin can be secured, then that
plugin should be used, and the value of the data attribute, if any, should be passed to the
plugin. If no suitable plugin can be found, or if the
plugin reports an error, jump to the step below labeled fallback.
If the data attribute is present and its value is
not the empty string, then:
If the type attribute is present and its value is
not a type that the user agent supports, and is not a type that the user agent can find a
plugin for, then the user agent may jump to the step below labeled fallback
without fetching the content to examine its real type.
Parse the URL specified by the data attribute, relative to the element's node
document.
If that failed, fire an event named error at the element, then jump to the step below labeled
fallback.
Let request be a new request whose
url is the resulting URL record,
client is the element's node
document's Window object's environment settings object,
destination is "object", credentials
mode is "include", and whose use-URL-credentials
flag is set.
Fetch request.
Fetching the resource must delay the load event of the element's node document until the task that is queued by the networking task source once the resource has been fetched (defined next) has been run.
For the purposes of the application cache networking model, this fetch operation is not for a child browsing context (though it might end up being used for one after all, as defined below).
If the resource is not yet available (e.g. because the resource was not available in the cache, so that loading the resource required making a request over the network), then jump to the step below labeled fallback. The task that is queued by the networking task source once the resource is available must restart this algorithm from this step. Resources can load incrementally; user agents may opt to consider a resource "available" whenever enough data has been obtained to begin processing the resource.
If the load failed (e.g. there was an HTTP 404 error, there was a DNS error), fire an event named error
at the element, then jump to the step below labeled fallback.
Determine the resource type, as follows:
Let the resource type be unknown.
If the object element has a type
attribute and a typemustmatch attribute, and
the resource has associated Content-Type metadata, and the
type specified in the resource's Content-Type metadata is
an ASCII case-insensitive match for the value of the element's type attribute, then let resource type
be that type and jump to the step below labeled handler.
If the object element has a typemustmatch attribute, jump to the step below
labeled handler.
If the user agent is configured to strictly obey Content-Type headers for this resource, and the resource has associated Content-Type metadata, then let the resource type be the type specified in the resource's Content-Type metadata, and jump to the step below labeled handler.
This can introduce a vulnerability, wherein a site is trying to embed a resource that uses a particular plugin, but the remote site overrides that and instead furnishes the user agent with a resource that triggers a different plugin with different security characteristics.
If there is a type attribute present on the
object element, and that attribute's value is not a type that the user agent
supports, but it is a type that a plugin supports, then let the resource type be the type specified in that type attribute, and jump to the step below labeled
handler.
Run the appropriate set of steps from the following list:
Let binary be false.
If the type specified in the resource's Content-Type
metadata is "text/plain", and the result of applying the rules for distinguishing if a resource is
text or binary to the resource is that the resource is not
text/plain, then set binary to true.
If the type specified in the resource's Content-Type
metadata is "application/octet-stream", then set binary to true.
If binary is false, then let the resource type be the type specified in the resource's Content-Type metadata, and jump to the step below labeled handler.
If there is a type attribute present on the
object element, and its value is not application/octet-stream,
then run the following steps:
If the attribute's value is a type that a plugin supports, or the
attribute's value is a type that starts with "image/" that is
not also an XML MIME type, then let the resource type be the
type specified in that type attribute.
Jump to the step below labeled handler.
If there is a type attribute present on the
object element, then let the tentative type be the type
specified in that type attribute.
Otherwise, let tentative type be the computed type of the resource.
If tentative type is not
application/octet-stream, then let resource type be
tentative type and jump to the step below labeled
handler.
If applying the URL parser algorithm to the URL of the specified resource (after any redirects) results in a URL record whose path component matches a pattern that a plugin supports, then let resource type be the type that that plugin can handle.
For example, a plugin might say that it can handle resources with path components that end with the four character string
".swf".
It is possible for this step to finish, or for one of the substeps above to jump straight to the next step, with resource type still being unknown. In both cases, the next step will trigger fallback.
Handler: Handle the content as given by the first of the following cases that matches:
If the object element's nested browsing context is non-null,
then it must be discarded and then set
to null.
If plugins are being sandboxed and the plugin that supports resource type cannot be secured, jump to the step below labeled fallback.
Otherwise, the user agent should use the plugin that supports resource type and pass the content of the resource to that plugin. If the plugin reports an error, then jump to the step below labeled fallback.
image/"If the object element's nested browsing context is null, set
the element's nested browsing context to a newly-created browsing context.
The object element must be associated with a newly created nested
browsing context, if it does not already have one.
If the URL of the given resource is not about:blank, the
element's nested browsing context must then be navigated to that resource, with
replacement enabled, and with the object element's node
document's browsing context as the
source browsing context. (The data
attribute of the object element doesn't get updated if the browsing context
gets further navigated to other locations.)
If the URL of the given resource is about:blank, then,
instead, the user agent must queue a task to fire an event named load
at the object element. No load event is fired at the about:blank document
itself.
The object element represents the nested browsing
context.
If the name attribute is present, the
object element's nested browsing context's browsing context
name must be set to the value of this attribute; otherwise, the browsing
context name must be set to the empty string.
In certain situations, e.g., if the resource was fetched from an
application cache but it is an HTML file with a manifest attribute that points to a different application cache manifest, the navigation of the browsing context will be restarted
so as to load the resource afresh from the network or a different application
cache. Even if the resource is then found to have a different type, it is still used
as part of a nested browsing context: only the navigate algorithm
is restarted, not this object algorithm.
image/", and support
for images has not been disabledIf the object element's nested browsing context is non-null,
then it must be discarded and then set
to null.
Apply the image sniffing rules to determine the type of the image.
The object element represents the specified image.
If the image cannot be rendered, e.g. because it is malformed or in an unsupported format, jump to the step below labeled fallback.
The given resource type is not supported. Jump to the step below labeled fallback.
If the previous step ended with the resource type being unknown, this is the case that is triggered.
The element's contents are not part of what the object element
represents.
Abort these steps. Once the resource is completely loaded, queue a task to
fire an event named load at the element.
If the data attribute is absent but the type attribute is present, and the user agent can find a
plugin suitable according to the value of the type attribute, and either plugins aren't being sandboxed or the plugin can be
secured, then that plugin should be used. If these conditions cannot be met, or if the
plugin reports an error, jump to the step below labeled fallback. Otherwise
abort these steps; once the plugin is completely loaded, queue a task to fire an event named load at
the element.
Fallback: The object element represents the element's
children, ignoring any leading param element children. This is the element's
fallback content. If the element has an instantiated plugin, then
unload it. If the element's nested browsing context is non-null, then it must be
discarded and then set to null.
When the algorithm above instantiates a plugin, the user agent
should pass to the plugin used the names and values of all the attributes on the
element, in the order they were added to the element, with the attributes added by the parser
being ordered in source order, followed by a parameter named "PARAM" whose value is null, followed
by all the names and values of parameters given by
param elements that are children of the object element, in tree
order. If the plugin supports a scriptable interface, the
HTMLObjectElement object representing the element should expose that interface. The
object element represents the plugin. The
plugin is not a nested browsing context.
Plugins are considered sandboxed for the purpose of an
object element if the sandboxed plugins browsing context flag is set on
the object element's node document's active sandboxing flag
set.
Due to the algorithm above, the contents of object elements act as fallback
content, used only when referenced resources can't be shown (e.g. because it returned a 404
error). This allows multiple object elements to be nested inside each other,
targeting multiple user agents with different capabilities, with the user agent picking the first
one it supports.
When an object element's nested browsing context is non-null: if the
object element's nested browsing context's active document
is not ready for post-load tasks, and when anything is delaying the load event of the object element's browsing
context's active document, and when the object element's
browsing context is in the delaying load
events mode, the object must delay the load event of its
document.
The task source for the tasks mentioned in this section is the DOM manipulation task source.
The usemap attribute, if present while the
object element represents an image, can indicate that the object has an associated
image map. The attribute must be ignored if the
object element doesn't represent an image.
The form attribute is used to explicitly associate the
object element with its form owner.
Constraint validation: object elements are always barred
from constraint validation.
The object element supports dimension attributes.
The IDL attributes data, type and name each must reflect the respective
content attributes of the same name. The typeMustMatch IDL attribute must
reflect the typemustmatch content
attribute. The useMap IDL attribute must
reflect the usemap content attribute.
The contentDocument IDL attribute,
on getting, must return the object element's content document.
The contentWindow IDL attribute must
return the WindowProxy object of the object element's nested
browsing context, if its nested browsing context is non-null; otherwise, it
must return null.
The willValidate, validity, and validationMessage attributes, and the checkValidity(), reportValidity(), and setCustomValidity() methods, are part of the
constraint validation API. The form IDL attribute
is part of the element's forms API.
In the following example, a Java applet is embedded in a page using the object
element. (Generally speaking, it is better to avoid using applets like these and instead use
native JavaScript and HTML to provide the functionality, since that way the application will work
on all Web browsers without requiring a third-party plugin. Many devices, especially embedded
devices, do not support third-party technologies like Java.)
<figure> <object type="application/x-java-applet"> <param name="code" value="MyJavaClass"> <p>You do not have Java available, or it is disabled.</p> </object> <figcaption>My Java Clock</figcaption> </figure>
In this example, an HTML page is embedded in another using the object
element.
<figure> <object data="clock.html"></object> <figcaption>My HTML Clock</figcaption> </figure>
The following example shows how a plugin can be used in HTML (in this case the Flash plugin,
to show a video file). Fallback is provided for users who do not have Flash enabled, in this case
using the video element to show the video for those using user agents that support
video, and finally providing a link to the video for those who have neither Flash
nor a video-capable browser.
<p>Look at my video: <object type="application/x-shockwave-flash"> <param name=movie value="https://video.example.com/library/watch.swf"> <param name=allowfullscreen value=true> <param name=flashvars value="https://video.example.com/vids/315981"> <video controls src="https://video.example.com/vids/315981"> <a href="https://video.example.com/vids/315981">View video</a>. </video> </object> </p>
param elementobject element, before any flow content.name — Name of parametervalue — Value of parameter[HTMLConstructor]
interface HTMLParamElement : HTMLElement {
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString name;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString value;
};
The param element defines parameters for plugins invoked by object
elements. It does not represent anything on its own.
The name attribute gives the name of the
parameter.
The value attribute gives the value of the
parameter.
Both attributes must be present. They may have any value.
If both attributes are present, and if the parent element of the param is an
object element, then the element defines a parameter with the given name-value pair.
If either the name or value of a parameter defined
by a param element that is the child of an object element that
represents an instantiated plugin changes, and if that
plugin is communicating with the user agent using an API that features the ability to
update the plugin when the name or value of a parameter so changes, then the user agent must
appropriately exercise that ability to notify the plugin of the change.
The IDL attributes name and value must both reflect the respective
content attributes of the same name.
The following example shows how the param element can be used to pass a parameter
to a plugin, in this case the O3D plugin.
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>O3D Utah Teapot</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>
<object type="application/vnd.o3d.auto">
<param name="o3d_features" value="FloatingPointTextures">
<img src="o3d-teapot.png"
title="3D Utah Teapot illustration rendered using O3D."
alt="When O3D renders the Utah Teapot, it appears as a squat
teapot with a shiny metallic finish on which the
surroundings are reflected, with a faint shadow caused by
the lighting.">
<p>To see the teapot actually rendered by O3D on your
computer, please download and install the <a
href="http://code.google.com/apis/o3d/docs/gettingstarted.html#install">O3D plugin</a>.</p>
</object>
<script src="o3d-teapot.js"></script>
</p>
</body>
</html>
video elementSupport: videoChrome for Android 57+Chrome 4+UC Browser for Android 11.4+iOS Safari 3.2+Firefox 20+IE 9+Samsung Internet 4+Opera Mini NoneAndroid Browser 2.3+Edge 12+Safari 4+Opera 10.5+
Source: caniuse.com
controls attribute: Interactive content.src attribute:
zero or more track elements, then
transparent, but with no media element descendants.src attribute: zero or more source elements, then
zero or more track elements, then
transparent, but with no media element descendants.src — Address of the resourcecrossorigin — How the element handles crossorigin requestsposter — Poster frame to show prior to video playbackpreload — Hints how much buffering the media resource will likely needautoplay — Hint that the media resource can be started automatically when the page is loadedplaysinline — Encourage the user agent to display video content within the element's playback arealoop — Whether to loop the media resourcemuted — Whether to mute the media resource by defaultcontrols — Show user agent controlswidth — Horizontal dimensionheight — Vertical dimension[HTMLConstructor]
interface HTMLVideoElement : HTMLMediaElement {
[CEReactions] attribute unsigned long width;
[CEReactions] attribute unsigned long height;
readonly attribute unsigned long videoWidth;
readonly attribute unsigned long videoHeight;
[CEReactions] attribute USVString poster;
[CEReactions] attribute boolean playsInline;
};
A video element is used for playing videos or movies, and audio files with
captions.
Content may be provided inside the video element. User agents
should not show this content to the user; it is intended for older Web browsers which do
not support video, so that legacy video plugins can be tried, or to show text to the
users of these older browsers informing them of how to access the video contents.
In particular, this content is not intended to address accessibility concerns. To
make video content accessible to the partially sighted, the blind, the hard-of-hearing, the deaf,
and those with other physical or cognitive disabilities, a variety of features are available.
Captions can be provided, either embedded in the video stream or as external files using the
track element. Sign-language tracks can be embedded in the video stream. Audio
descriptions can be embedded in the video stream or in text form using a WebVTT file
referenced using the track element and synthesized into speech by the user agent.
WebVTT can also be used to provide chapter titles. For users who would rather not use a media
element at all, transcripts or other textual alternatives can be provided by simply linking to
them in the prose near the video element. [WEBVTT]
The video element is a media element whose media data is
ostensibly video data, possibly with associated audio data.
The src, preload,
autoplay, loop,
muted, and controls attributes are the attributes common to all media elements.
The poster attribute gives the
URL of an image file that the user agent can show while no video data is available.
The attribute, if present, must contain a valid non-empty URL potentially surrounded by
spaces.
If the specified resource is to be used, then, when the element is created or when the poster attribute is set, changed, or removed, the user agent must
run the following steps to determine the element's poster frame (regardless of the
value of the element's show poster flag):
If there is an existing instance of this algorithm running for this video
element, abort that instance of this algorithm without changing the poster
frame.
If the poster attribute's value is the empty string
or if the attribute is absent, then there is no poster frame; abort these
steps.
Parse the poster attribute's value relative to the element's node
document. If this fails, then there is no poster frame; abort these
steps.
Let request be a new request whose
url is the resulting URL record,
client is the element's node document's
Window object's environment settings object, type is "image", destination is "image",
credentials mode is "include", and whose use-URL-credentials flag is set.
Fetch request. This must delay the load event of the element's node document.
If an image is thus obtained, the poster frame is that image. Otherwise, there is no poster frame.
The image given by the poster attribute,
the poster frame, is intended to be a representative frame of the
video (typically one of the first non-blank frames) that gives the user an idea of what the video
is like.
The playsinline is a boolean
attribute. If present, it serves as a hint to the user agent that the video ought to be
displayed "inline" in the document by default, constrained to the element's playback area, instead
of being displayed fullscreen or in an independent resizable window.
The absence of the playsinline does
not imply that the video will display fullscreen by default. Indeed, most user agents have chosen
to play all videos inline by default, and in such user agents the playsinline attribute has no effect.
A video element represents what is given for the first matching condition in the
list below:
readyState attribute is either HAVE_NOTHING, or HAVE_METADATA but no video data has yet been obtained at
all, or the element's readyState attribute is any
subsequent value but the media resource does not have a video channel)video element represents its poster frame, if any,
or else transparent black with no intrinsic dimensions.video element is paused, the current playback position is the first frame of video,
and the element's show poster flag is setvideo element represents its poster frame, if any,
or else the first frame of the video.video element is paused, and the
frame of video corresponding to the current playback
position is not available (e.g. because the video is seeking or buffering)video element is neither potentially playing nor paused (e.g. when seeking or stalled)video element represents the last frame of the video to have
been rendered.video element is pausedvideo element represents the frame of video corresponding to
the current playback position.video element has a video channel and is potentially
playing)video element represents the frame of video at the continuously
increasing "current" position. When the
current playback position changes such that the last frame rendered is no longer the
frame corresponding to the current playback position in the video, the new frame
must be rendered.Frames of video must be obtained from the video track that was selected when the event loop last reached step 1.
Which frame in a video stream corresponds to a particular playback position is defined by the video stream's format.
The video element also represents any text track cues whose text track cue active flag is set and whose
text track is in the showing mode, and any
audio from the media resource, at the current playback position.
Any audio associated with the media resource must, if played, be played synchronized with the current playback position, at the element's effective media volume. The user agent must play the audio from audio tracks that were enabled when the event loop last reached step 1.
In addition to the above, the user agent may provide messages to the user (such as "buffering", "no video loaded", "error", or more detailed information) by overlaying text or icons on the video or other areas of the element's playback area, or in another appropriate manner.
User agents that cannot render the video may instead make the element represent a link to an external video playback utility or to the video data itself.
When a video element's media resource has a video channel, the
element provides a paint source whose width is the media resource's
intrinsic width, whose height is the
media resource's intrinsic
height, and whose appearance is the frame of video corresponding to the current playback position, if that is available, or else
(e.g. when the video is seeking or buffering) its previous appearance, if any, or else (e.g.
because the video is still loading the first frame) blackness.
videoWidthvideoHeightThese attributes return the intrinsic dimensions of the video, or zero if the dimensions are not known.
The intrinsic width and intrinsic height of the media resource are the dimensions of the resource in CSS pixels after taking into account the resource's dimensions, aspect ratio, clean aperture, resolution, and so forth, as defined for the format used by the resource. If an anamorphic format does not define how to apply the aspect ratio to the video data's dimensions to obtain the "correct" dimensions, then the user agent must apply the ratio by increasing one dimension and leaving the other unchanged.
The videoWidth IDL attribute must return
the intrinsic width of the video in CSS pixels. The videoHeight IDL attribute must return the intrinsic height of the video in CSS pixels. If the element's readyState attribute is HAVE_NOTHING, then the attributes must return 0.
Whenever the intrinsic width
or intrinsic height of the video changes
(including, for example, because the selected video
track was changed), if the element's readyState
attribute is not HAVE_NOTHING, the user agent must
queue a task to fire an event named resize at the media element.
The video element supports dimension attributes.
In the absence of style rules to the contrary, video content should be rendered inside the element's playback area such that the video content is shown centered in the playback area at the largest possible size that fits completely within it, with the video content's aspect ratio being preserved. Thus, if the aspect ratio of the playback area does not match the aspect ratio of the video, the video will be shown letterboxed or pillarboxed. Areas of the element's playback area that do not contain the video represent nothing.
In user agents that implement CSS, the above requirement can be implemented by using the style rule suggested in the rendering section.
The intrinsic width of a video element's playback area is the
intrinsic width of the poster frame, if that is available and the
element currently represents its poster frame; otherwise, it is the intrinsic width of the video resource, if that is
available; otherwise the intrinsic width is missing.
The intrinsic height of a video element's playback area is the
intrinsic height of the poster frame, if that is available and the
element currently represents its poster frame; otherwise it is the intrinsic height of the video resource, if that is
available; otherwise the intrinsic height is missing.
The default object size is a width of 300 CSS pixels and a height of 150 CSS pixels. [CSSIMAGES]
A video element is said to intersect the viewport when it is
being rendered and its associated CSS layout box intersects the
viewport.
User agents should provide controls to enable or disable the display of closed captions, audio description tracks, and other additional data associated with the video stream, though such features should, again, not interfere with the page's normal rendering.
User agents may allow users to view the video content in manners more suitable to the user,
such as fullscreen or in an independent resizable window. User agents may even trigger such a
viewing mode by default upon playing a video, although they should not do so when the playsinline attribute is specified. As with the other user
interface features, controls to enable this should not interfere with the page's normal rendering
unless the user agent is exposing a user
interface. In such an independent viewing mode, however, user agents may make full user
interfaces visible, even if the controls attribute is
absent.
User agents may allow video playback to affect system features that could interfere with the user's experience; for example, user agents could disable screensavers while video playback is in progress.
The poster IDL attribute must
reflect the poster content attribute.
The playsInline IDL attribute must
reflect the playsinline content
attribute.
This example shows how to detect when a video has failed to play correctly:
<script>
function failed(e) {
// video playback failed - show a message saying why
switch (e.target.error.code) {
case e.target.error.MEDIA_ERR_ABORTED:
alert('You aborted the video playback.');
break;
case e.target.error.MEDIA_ERR_NETWORK:
alert('A network error caused the video download to fail part-way.');
break;
case e.target.error.MEDIA_ERR_DECODE:
alert('The video playback was aborted due to a corruption problem or because the video used features your browser did not support.');
break;
case e.target.error.MEDIA_ERR_SRC_NOT_SUPPORTED:
alert('The video could not be loaded, either because the server or network failed or because the format is not supported.');
break;
default:
alert('An unknown error occurred.');
break;
}
}
</script>
<p><video src="tgif.vid" autoplay controls onerror="failed(event)"></video></p>
<p><a href="tgif.vid">Download the video file</a>.</p>
audio elementSpec bugs: 7253
Support: audioChrome for Android 57+Chrome 4+UC Browser for Android 11.4+iOS Safari 4.0+Firefox 20+IE 9+Samsung Internet 4+Opera Mini NoneAndroid Browser 2.3+Edge 12+Safari 4+Opera 10.5+
Source: caniuse.com
controls attribute: Interactive content.controls attribute: Palpable content.src attribute:
zero or more track elements, then
transparent, but with no media element descendants.src attribute: zero or more source elements, then
zero or more track elements, then
transparent, but with no media element descendants.src — Address of the resourcecrossorigin — How the element handles crossorigin requestspreload — Hints how much buffering the media resource will likely needautoplay — Hint that the media resource can be started automatically when the page is loadedloop — Whether to loop the media resourcemuted — Whether to mute the media resource by defaultcontrols — Show user agent controls[HTMLConstructor, NamedConstructor=Audio(optional DOMString src)]
interface HTMLAudioElement : HTMLMediaElement {};
An audio element represents a sound or audio stream.
Content may be provided inside the audio element. User agents
should not show this content to the user; it is intended for older Web browsers which do
not support audio, so that legacy audio plugins can be tried, or to show text to the
users of these older browsers informing them of how to access the audio contents.
In particular, this content is not intended to address accessibility concerns. To
make audio content accessible to the deaf or to those with other physical or cognitive
disabilities, a variety of features are available. If captions or a sign language video are
available, the video element can be used instead of the audio element to
play the audio, allowing users to enable the visual alternatives. Chapter titles can be provided
to aid navigation, using the track element and a WebVTT file. And,
naturally, transcripts or other textual alternatives can be provided by simply linking to them in
the prose near the audio element. [WEBVTT]
The audio element is a media element whose media data is
ostensibly audio data.
The src, preload,
autoplay, loop,
muted, and controls attributes are the attributes common to all media elements.
When an audio element is potentially playing, it must have its audio
data played synchronized with the current playback position, at the element's
effective media volume. The user agent must play the audio from audio tracks that
were enabled when the event loop last reached step 1.
When an audio element is not potentially playing, audio must not play
for the element.
Audio( [ url ] )Returns a new audio element, with the src
attribute set to the value passed in the argument, if applicable.
A constructor is provided for creating HTMLAudioElement objects (in addition to
the factory methods from DOM such as createElement()):
Audio(src). When invoked,
the constructor must perform the following steps:
Let document be the current global object's associated Document.
Let audio be the result of creating an
element given document, audio, and the HTML
namespace.
Set an attribute value for
audio using "preload" and "auto".
If src is given, then set
an attribute value for audio using "src"
and src. (This will cause the user
agent to invoke the object's resource selection
algorithm before returning.)
Return audio.
track elementkind — The type of text tracksrc — Address of the resourcesrclang — Language of the text tracklabel — User-visible labeldefault — Enable the track if no other text track is more suitable[HTMLConstructor]
interface HTMLTrackElement : HTMLElement {
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString kind;
[CEReactions] attribute USVString src;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString srclang;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString label;
[CEReactions] attribute boolean default;
const unsigned short NONE = 0;
const unsigned short LOADING = 1;
const unsigned short LOADED = 2;
const unsigned short ERROR = 3;
readonly attribute unsigned short readyState;
readonly attribute TextTrack track;
};
The track element allows authors to specify explicit external timed text tracks for media elements. It
does not represent anything on its own.
The kind attribute is an enumerated
attribute. The following table lists the keywords defined for this attribute. The keyword
given in the first cell of each row maps to the state given in the second cell.
| Keyword | State | Brief description |
|---|---|---|
subtitles
| Subtitles | Transcription or translation of the dialogue, suitable for when the sound is available but not understood (e.g. because the user does not understand the language of the media resource's audio track). Overlaid on the video. |
captions
| Captions | Transcription or translation of the dialogue, sound effects, relevant musical cues, and other relevant audio information, suitable for when sound is unavailable or not clearly audible (e.g. because it is muted, drowned-out by ambient noise, or because the user is deaf). Overlaid on the video; labeled as appropriate for the hard-of-hearing. |
descriptions
| Descriptions | Textual descriptions of the video component of the media resource, intended for audio synthesis when the visual component is obscured, unavailable, or not usable (e.g. because the user is interacting with the application without a screen while driving, or because the user is blind). Synthesized as audio. |
chapters
| Chapters | Chapter titles, intended to be used for navigating the media resource. Displayed as an interactive (potentially nested) list in the user agent's interface. |
metadata
| Metadata | Tracks intended for use from script. Not displayed by the user agent. |
The attribute may be omitted. The missing value default is the subtitles state. The invalid value default is the metadata state.
The src attribute gives the URL of
the text track data. The value must be a valid non-empty URL potentially surrounded by
spaces. This attribute must be present.
If the element has a src attribute whose value is not the
empty string and whose value, when the attribute was set, could be successfully parsed relative to the element's node document, then the
element's track URL is the resulting URL string. Otherwise, the element's
track URL is the empty string.
If the element's track URL identifies a WebVTT resource, and the element's kind attribute is not in the metadata state, then the WebVTT file must be a
WebVTT file using cue text. [WEBVTT]
Furthermore, if the element's track URL identifies a WebVTT resource, and the
element's kind attribute is in the chapters state, then the WebVTT file must be both a
WebVTT file using chapter title text and a WebVTT file using only nested
cues. [WEBVTT]
The srclang attribute gives the language of
the text track data. The value must be a valid BCP 47 language tag. This attribute must be present
if the element's kind attribute is in the subtitles state. [BCP47]
If the element has a srclang attribute whose value is
not the empty string, then the element's track language is the value of the attribute.
Otherwise, the element has no track language.
The label attribute gives a user-readable
title for the track. This title is used by user agents when listing subtitle, caption, and audio description tracks in their user interface.
The value of the label attribute, if the attribute is
present, must not be the empty string. Furthermore, there must not be two track
element children of the same media element whose kind attributes are in the same state, whose srclang attributes are both missing or have values that
represent the same language, and whose label attributes are
again both missing or both have the same value.
If the element has a label attribute whose value is not
the empty string, then the element's track label is the value of the attribute.
Otherwise, the element's track label is an empty string.
The default attribute is a boolean
attribute, which, if specified, indicates that the track is to be enabled if the user's
preferences do not indicate that another track would be more appropriate.
Each media element must have no more than one track element child
whose kind attribute is in the subtitles or captions state and whose default attribute is specified.
Each media element must have no more than one track element child
whose kind attribute is in the description state and whose default attribute is specified.
Each media element must have no more than one track element child
whose kind attribute is in the chapters state and whose default attribute is specified.
There is no limit on the number of track elements whose kind attribute is in the metadata state and whose default attribute is specified.
readyStateReturns the text track readiness state, represented by a number from the following list:
NONE (0)The text track not loaded state.
LOADING (1)The text track loading state.
LOADED (2)The text track loaded state.
ERROR (3)The text track failed to load state.
trackReturns the TextTrack object corresponding to the text track of the track element.
The readyState attribute must return the
numeric value corresponding to the text track readiness state of the
track element's text track, as defined by the following list:
NONE (numeric value 0)LOADING (numeric value 1)LOADED (numeric value 2)ERROR (numeric value 3)The track IDL attribute must, on getting,
return the track element's text track's corresponding
TextTrack object.
The src, srclang, label, and default IDL attributes must reflect the
respective content attributes of the same name. The kind IDL attribute must reflect the content
attribute of the same name, limited to only known values.
This video has subtitles in several languages:
<video src="brave.webm"> <track kind=subtitles src=brave.en.vtt srclang=en label="English"> <track kind=captions src=brave.en.hoh.vtt srclang=en label="English for the Hard of Hearing"> <track kind=subtitles src=brave.fr.vtt srclang=fr lang=fr label="Français"> <track kind=subtitles src=brave.de.vtt srclang=de lang=de label="Deutsch"> </video>
(The lang attributes on the last two describe the language of
the label attribute, not the language of the subtitles
themselves. The language of the subtitles is given by the srclang attribute.)
Spec bugs: 28625
HTMLMediaElement objects (audio and video, in this
specification) are simply known as media elements.
enum CanPlayTypeResult { "" /* empty string */, "maybe", "probably" };
typedef (MediaStream or MediaSource or Blob) MediaProvider;
interface HTMLMediaElement : HTMLElement {
// error state
readonly attribute MediaError? error;
// network state
[CEReactions] attribute USVString src;
attribute MediaProvider? srcObject;
readonly attribute USVString currentSrc;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString? crossOrigin;
const unsigned short NETWORK_EMPTY = 0;
const unsigned short NETWORK_IDLE = 1;
const unsigned short NETWORK_LOADING = 2;
const unsigned short NETWORK_NO_SOURCE = 3;
readonly attribute unsigned short networkState;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString preload;
readonly attribute TimeRanges buffered;
void load();
CanPlayTypeResult canPlayType(DOMString type);
// ready state
const unsigned short HAVE_NOTHING = 0;
const unsigned short HAVE_METADATA = 1;
const unsigned short HAVE_CURRENT_DATA = 2;
const unsigned short HAVE_FUTURE_DATA = 3;
const unsigned short HAVE_ENOUGH_DATA = 4;
readonly attribute unsigned short readyState;
readonly attribute boolean seeking;
// playback state
attribute double currentTime;
void fastSeek(double time);
readonly attribute unrestricted double duration;
object getStartDate();
readonly attribute boolean paused;
attribute double defaultPlaybackRate;
attribute double playbackRate;
readonly attribute TimeRanges played;
readonly attribute TimeRanges seekable;
readonly attribute boolean ended;
[CEReactions] attribute boolean autoplay;
[CEReactions] attribute boolean loop;
Promise<void> play();
void pause();
// controls
[CEReactions] attribute boolean controls;
attribute double volume;
attribute boolean muted;
[CEReactions] attribute boolean defaultMuted;
// tracks
[SameObject] readonly attribute AudioTrackList audioTracks;
[SameObject] readonly attribute VideoTrackList videoTracks;
[SameObject] readonly attribute TextTrackList textTracks;
TextTrack addTextTrack(TextTrackKind kind, optional DOMString label = "", optional DOMString language = "");
};
The media element attributes, src, crossorigin, preload, autoplay,
loop, muted, and
controls, apply to all media elements. They are defined in this section.
Media elements are used to present audio data, or video and audio data, to the user. This is referred to as media data in this section, since this section applies equally to media elements for audio or for video. The term media resource is used to refer to the complete set of media data, e.g. the complete video file, or complete audio file.
A media resource can have multiple audio and video tracks. For the purposes of a
media element, the video data of the media resource is only that of the
currently selected track (if any) as given by the element's videoTracks attribute when the event loop last
reached step 1, and the audio data of the media resource is the result of mixing all
the currently enabled tracks (if any) given by the element's audioTracks attribute when the event loop last
reached step 1.
Both audio and video elements can be used for both audio
and video. The main difference between the two is simply that the audio element has
no playback area for visual content (such as video or captions), whereas the video
element does.
Except where otherwise explicitly specified, the task source for all the tasks queued in this section and its subsections is the media element event task source of the media element in question.
errorReturns a MediaError object representing the current error state of the
element.
Returns null if there is no error.
All media elements have an associated error status, which
records the last error the element encountered since its resource selection algorithm was last invoked. The
error attribute, on getting, must return the
MediaError object created for this last error, or null if there has not been an
error.
interface MediaError {
const unsigned short MEDIA_ERR_ABORTED = 1;
const unsigned short MEDIA_ERR_NETWORK = 2;
const unsigned short MEDIA_ERR_DECODE = 3;
const unsigned short MEDIA_ERR_SRC_NOT_SUPPORTED = 4;
readonly attribute unsigned short code;
readonly attribute DOMString message;
};
error . codeReturns the current error's error code, from the list below.
error . messageReturns a specific informative diagnostic message about the error condition encountered. The message and message format are not generally uniform across different user agents. If no such message is available, then the empty string is returned.
Every MediaError object has a message, which is a string, and a code, which is one of the following:
MEDIA_ERR_ABORTED (numeric value 1)MEDIA_ERR_NETWORK (numeric value 2)MEDIA_ERR_DECODE (numeric value 3)MEDIA_ERR_SRC_NOT_SUPPORTED (numeric value 4)src
attribute or assigned media provider object was not suitable.To create a MediaError,
given an error code which is one of the above values, return a new MediaError object
whose code is the given error code and whose message is a string containing any details the user
agent is able to supply about the cause of the error condition, or the empty string if the user
agent is unable to supply such details. This message string must not contain only the information
already available via the supplied error code; for example, it must not simply be a translation of
the code into a string format. If no additional information is available beyond that provided by
the error code, the message must be set to the
empty string.
The code attribute of a
MediaError object must return this MediaError object's code.
The message attribute of a
MediaError object must return this MediaError object's message.
The src content attribute on media elements gives the URL of the media resource (video, audio) to
show. The attribute, if present, must contain a valid non-empty URL potentially surrounded
by spaces.
If the itemprop attribute is specified on the media
element, then the src attribute must also be
specified.
The crossorigin content attribute on
media elements is a CORS settings attribute.
If a media element is created with a
src attribute, the user agent must immediately invoke the
media element's resource selection
algorithm.
If a src attribute of a media element is set
or changed, the user agent must invoke the media element's media element load
algorithm. (Removing the src attribute does
not do this, even if there are source elements present.)
The src IDL attribute on media elements must reflect the content attribute of the same
name.
The crossOrigin IDL attribute must
reflect the crossorigin content attribute.
A media provider object is an object that can represent a media
resource, separate from a URL. MediaStream objects,
MediaSource objects, and Blob objects are all media provider objects.
Each media element can have an assigned media provider object, which is a media provider object. When a media element is created, it has no assigned media provider object.
srcObject [ = source ]Allows the media element to be assigned a media provider object.
currentSrcReturns the URL of the current media resource, if any.
Returns the empty string when there is no media resource, or it doesn't have a URL.
The currentSrc IDL attribute must initially be set to
the empty string. Its value is changed by the resource
selection algorithm defined below.
The srcObject IDL attribute, on getting,
must return the element's assigned media provider object, if any, or null otherwise.
On setting, it must set the element's assigned media provider object to the new
value, and then invoke the element's media element load algorithm.
There are three ways to specify a media resource: the srcObject IDL attribute, the src content attribute, and source elements. The IDL
attribute takes priority, followed by the content attribute, followed by the elements.
A media resource can be described in terms of its type, specifically a
MIME type, in some cases with a codecs parameter. (Whether the
codecs parameter is allowed or not depends on the MIME type.) [RFC6381]
Types are usually somewhat incomplete descriptions; for example "video/mpeg" doesn't say anything except what the container type is, and even a
type like "video/mp4; codecs="avc1.42E01E, mp4a.40.2"" doesn't
include information like the actual bitrate (only the maximum bitrate). Thus, given a type, a user
agent can often only know whether it might be able to play media of that type (with
varying levels of confidence), or whether it definitely cannot play media of that
type.
A type that the user agent knows it cannot render is one that describes a resource that the user agent definitely does not support, for example because it doesn't recognize the container type, or it doesn't support the listed codecs.
The MIME type "application/octet-stream" with no parameters is never
a type that the user agent knows it cannot render. User agents must treat that type
as equivalent to the lack of any explicit Content-Type metadata
when it is used to label a potential media resource.
Only the MIME type "application/octet-stream" with no
parameters is special-cased here; if any parameter appears with it, it will be treated just like
any other MIME type. This is a deviation from the rule that unknown MIME type parameters should be
ignored.
canPlayType(type)Returns the empty string (a negative response), "maybe", or "probably" based on how confident the user agent is that it can play media resources of the given type.
The canPlayType(type) method must return the
empty string if type is a type that the user agent knows it cannot
render or is the type "application/octet-stream"; it must return "probably" if the user agent is confident
that the type represents a media resource that it can render if used in with this
audio or video element; and it must return "maybe" otherwise. Implementors are encouraged
to return "maybe" unless the type can be
confidently established as being supported or not. Generally, a user agent should never return
"probably" for a type that allows the codecs parameter if that parameter is not present.
This script tests to see if the user agent supports a (fictional) new format to dynamically
decide whether to use a video element or a plugin:
<section id="video">
<p><a href="playing-cats.nfv">Download video</a></p>
</section>
<script>
var videoSection = document.getElementById('video');
var videoElement = document.createElement('video');
var support = videoElement.canPlayType('video/x-new-fictional-format;codecs="kittens,bunnies"');
if (support != "probably" && "New Fictional Video Plugin" in navigator.plugins) {
// not confident of browser support
// but we have a plugin
// so use plugin instead
videoElement = document.createElement("embed");
} else if (support == "") {
// no support from browser and no plugin
// do nothing
videoElement = null;
}
if (videoElement) {
while (videoSection.hasChildNodes())
videoSection.removeChild(videoSection.firstChild);
videoElement.setAttribute("src", "playing-cats.nfv");
videoSection.appendChild(videoElement);
}
</script>
The type attribute of the
source element allows the user agent to avoid downloading resources that use formats
it cannot render.
networkStateReturns the current state of network activity for the element, from the codes in the list below.
As media elements interact with the network, their current
network activity is represented by the networkState attribute. On getting, it must
return the current network state of the element, which must be one of the following values:
NETWORK_EMPTY (numeric value 0)NETWORK_IDLE (numeric value 1)NETWORK_LOADING (numeric value 2)NETWORK_NO_SOURCE (numeric value 3)The resource selection algorithm defined
below describes exactly when the networkState
attribute changes value and what events fire to indicate changes in this state.
load()Causes the element to reset and start selecting and loading a new media resource from scratch.
All media elements have a can autoplay flag, which must begin in the true state, and a delaying-the-load-event flag, which must begin in the false state. While the delaying-the-load-event flag is true, the element must delay the load event of its document.
When the load() method on a media
element is invoked, the user agent must run the media element load
algorithm.
The media element load algorithm consists of the following steps.
Abort any already-running instance of the resource selection algorithm for this element.
Let pending tasks be a list of all tasks from the media element's media element event task source in one of the task queues.
For each task in pending tasks that would resolve pending play promises or reject pending play promises, immediately resolve or reject those promises in the order the corresponding tasks were queued.
Remove each task in pending tasks from its task queue
Basically, pending events and callbacks are discarded and promises in-flight to be resolved/rejected are resolved/rejected immediately when the media element starts loading a new resource.
If the media element's networkState is set to NETWORK_LOADING or NETWORK_IDLE, queue a task to fire an event named abort at the media element.
If the media element's networkState
is not set to NETWORK_EMPTY, then:
Queue a task to fire an event
named emptied at the media
element.
If a fetching process is in progress for the media element, the user agent should stop it.
If the media element's assigned media provider object is a
MediaSource object, then detach it.
If readyState is not set to HAVE_NOTHING, then set it to that state.
If the paused attribute is false, then:
Set the paused attribute to true.
Take pending play promises and reject pending play promises
with the result and an "AbortError"
DOMException.
If seeking is true, set it to false.
Set the current playback position to 0.
Set the official playback position to 0.
If this changed the official playback position, then queue a task
to fire an event named timeupdate at the media element.
Set the timeline offset to Not-a-Number (NaN).
Update the duration attribute to Not-a-Number
(NaN).
The user agent will not fire a durationchange event for this particular change of
the duration.
Set the playbackRate attribute to the value of
the defaultPlaybackRate attribute.
Set the error attribute to null and the
can autoplay flag to true.
Invoke the media element's resource selection algorithm.
Playback of any previously playing media resource for this element stops.
The resource selection algorithm for a media element is as follows. This algorithm is always invoked as part of a task, but one of the first steps in the algorithm is to return and continue running the remaining steps in parallel. In addition, this algorithm interacts closely with the event loop mechanism; in particular, it has synchronous sections (which are triggered as part of the event loop algorithm). Steps in such sections are marked with ⌛.
Set the element's networkState attribute to
the NETWORK_NO_SOURCE value.
Set the element's show poster flag to true.
Set the media element's delaying-the-load-event flag to true (this delays the load event).
Await a stable state, allowing the task that invoked this algorithm to continue. The synchronous section consists of all the remaining steps of this algorithm until the algorithm says the synchronous section has ended. (Steps in synchronous sections are marked with ⌛.)
⌛ If the media element's blocked-on-parser flag is false, then populate the list of pending text tracks.
⌛ If the media element has an assigned media provider object, then let mode be object.
⌛ Otherwise, if the media element has no assigned media provider
object but has a src
attribute, then let mode be attribute.
⌛ Otherwise, if the media element does not have an assigned media provider
object and does not have a src attribute, but does have a source element child, then
let mode be children and let candidate
be the first such source element child in tree order.
⌛ Otherwise the media element has no assigned media provider
object and has neither a src attribute nor a source element child: set the
networkState to NETWORK_EMPTY, and abort these steps; the
synchronous section ends.
⌛ Set the media element's networkState to NETWORK_LOADING.
⌛ Queue a task to fire an
event named loadstart at the media
element.
Run the appropriate steps from the following list:
⌛ Set the currentSrc attribute to
the empty string.
End the synchronous section, continuing the remaining steps in parallel.
Run the resource fetch algorithm with the assigned media provider object. If that algorithm returns without aborting this one, then the load failed.
Failed with media provider: Reaching this step indicates that the media resource failed to load. Take pending play promises and queue a task to run the dedicated media source failure steps with the result.
Wait for the task queued by the previous step to have executed.
Abort these steps. The element won't attempt to load another resource until this algorithm is triggered again.
⌛ If the src
attribute's value is the empty string, then end the synchronous section, and jump
down to the failed with attribute step below.
⌛ Let urlString and urlRecord be the resulting URL
string and the resulting URL record, respectively, that would have
resulted from parsing the URL specified by the
src attribute's value relative to the media
element's node document when the src
attribute was last changed.
⌛ If urlString was obtained successfully, set the currentSrc attribute to urlString.
End the synchronous section, continuing the remaining steps in parallel.
If urlRecord was obtained successfully, run the resource fetch algorithm with urlRecord. If that algorithm returns without aborting this one, then the load failed.
Failed with attribute: Reaching this step indicates that the media resource failed to load or that the given URL could not be parsed. Take pending play promises and queue a task to run the dedicated media source failure steps with the result.
Wait for the task queued by the previous step to have executed.
Abort these steps. The element won't attempt to load another resource until this algorithm is triggered again.
⌛ Let pointer be a position defined by two adjacent nodes in the media element's child list, treating the start of the list (before the first child in the list, if any) and end of the list (after the last child in the list, if any) as nodes in their own right. One node is the node before pointer, and the other node is the node after pointer. Initially, let pointer be the position between the candidate node and the next node, if there are any, or the end of the list, if it is the last node.
As nodes are inserted and removed into the media element, pointer must be updated as follows:
Other changes don't affect pointer.
⌛ Process candidate: If candidate does not have a
src attribute, or if its src attribute's value is the empty string, then end the
synchronous section, and jump down to the failed with elements step
below.
⌛ Let urlString and urlRecord be the resulting URL
string and the resulting URL record, respectively, that would have
resulted from parsing the URL specified by
candidate's src attribute's value relative
to the candidate's node document when the src attribute was last changed.
⌛ If urlString was not obtained successfully, then end the synchronous section, and jump down to the failed with elements step below.
⌛ If candidate has a type attribute whose value, when parsed as a MIME
type (including any codecs described by the codecs parameter, for
types that define that parameter), represents a type that the user agent knows it cannot
render, then end the synchronous section, and jump down to the failed with elements step below.
⌛ Set the currentSrc attribute to
urlString.
End the synchronous section, continuing the remaining steps in parallel.
Run the resource fetch algorithm with urlRecord. If that algorithm returns without aborting this one, then the load failed.
Failed with elements: Queue a task to fire an event named error at the candidate element.
Await a stable state. The synchronous section consists of all the remaining steps of this algorithm until the algorithm says the synchronous section has ended. (Steps in synchronous sections are marked with ⌛.)
⌛ Forget the media element's media-resource-specific tracks.
⌛ Find next candidate: Let candidate be null.
⌛ Search loop: If the node after pointer is the end of the list, then jump to the waiting step below.
⌛ If the node after pointer is a source element,
let candidate be that element.
⌛ Advance pointer so that the node before pointer is now the node that was after pointer, and the node after pointer is the node after the node that used to be after pointer, if any.
⌛ If candidate is null, jump back to the search loop step. Otherwise, jump back to the process candidate step.
⌛ Waiting: Set the element's networkState attribute to the NETWORK_NO_SOURCE value.
⌛ Set the element's show poster flag to true.
⌛ Queue a task to set the element's delaying-the-load-event flag to false. This stops delaying the load event.
End the synchronous section, continuing the remaining steps in parallel.
Wait until the node after pointer is a node other than the end of the list. (This step might wait forever.)
Await a stable state. The synchronous section consists of all the remaining steps of this algorithm until the algorithm says the synchronous section has ended. (Steps in synchronous sections are marked with ⌛.)
⌛ Set the element's delaying-the-load-event flag back to true (this delays the load event again, in case it hasn't been fired yet).
⌛ Set the networkState back to NETWORK_LOADING.
⌛ Jump back to the find next candidate step above.
The dedicated media source failure steps with a list of promises promises are the following steps:
Set the error attribute to the result of
creating a MediaError with MEDIA_ERR_SRC_NOT_SUPPORTED.
Set the element's networkState attribute to
the NETWORK_NO_SOURCE value.
Set the element's show poster flag to true.
Fire an event named error at the media element.
Reject pending play promises with promises and a
"NotSupportedError" DOMException.
Set the element's delaying-the-load-event flag to false. This stops delaying the load event.
The resource fetch algorithm for a media element and a given URL record or media provider object is as follows:
If the algorithm was invoked with media provider object or a URL record whose object is a media provider object, then let mode be local. Otherwise let mode be remote.
If mode is remote, then let the current media resource be the resource given by the URL record passed to this algorithm; otherwise, let the current media resource be the resource given by the media provider object. Either way, the current media resource is now the element's media resource.
Remove all media-resource-specific text tracks from the media element's list of pending text tracks, if any.
Run the appropriate steps from the following list:
Optionally, run the following substeps. This is the expected behavior if the user agent
intends to not attempt to fetch the resource until the user requests it explicitly (e.g. as
a way to implement the preload attribute's none keyword).
Set the networkState to NETWORK_IDLE.
Queue a task to fire an event
named suspend at the element.
Queue a task to set the element's delaying-the-load-event flag to false. This stops delaying the load event.
Wait for the task to be run.
Wait for an implementation-defined event (e.g. the user requesting that the media element begin playback).
Set the element's delaying-the-load-event flag back to true (this delays the load event again, in case it hasn't been fired yet).
Set the networkState to NETWORK_LOADING.
Let request be the result of creating a potential-CORS request given
current media resource's URL record, "media",
and the media element's crossorigin content attribute value.
Set request's client to the
media element's node document's Window object's
environment settings object and type
to "audio" if the media element is an audio
element and to "video" otherwise.
Fetch request.
The response's unsafe response obtained in this fashion, if any,
contains the media data. It can be CORS-same-origin or
CORS-cross-origin; this affects whether subtitles referenced in the media
data are exposed in the API and, for video elements, whether a
canvas gets tainted when the video is drawn on it.
The stall timeout is a user-agent defined length of time, which should be
about three seconds. When a media element that is actively attempting to obtain
media data has failed to receive any data for a duration equal to the
stall timeout, the user agent must queue a task to fire an event named stalled at the element.
User agents may allow users to selectively block or slow media data downloads. When a media element's download has been blocked altogether, the user agent must act as if it was stalled (as opposed to acting as if the connection was closed). The rate of the download may also be throttled automatically by the user agent, e.g. to balance the download with other connections sharing the same bandwidth.
User agents may decide to not download more content at any time, e.g.
after buffering five minutes of a one hour media resource, while waiting for the user to decide
whether to play the resource or not, while waiting for user input in an interactive resource, or
when the user navigates away from the page. When a media element's download has
been suspended, the user agent must queue a task, to set the networkState to NETWORK_IDLE and fire an event named suspend at the element. If and when downloading of the
resource resumes, the user agent must queue a task to set the networkState to NETWORK_LOADING. Between the queuing of these
tasks, the load is suspended (so progress events
don't fire, as described above).
The preload attribute provides a hint
regarding how much buffering the author thinks is advisable, even in the absence of the autoplay attribute.
When a user agent decides to completely suspend a download, e.g., if it is waiting until the user starts playback before downloading any further content, the user agent must queue a task to set the element's delaying-the-load-event flag to false. This stops delaying the load event.
The user agent may use whatever means necessary to fetch the resource (within the constraints put forward by this and other specifications); for example, reconnecting to the server in the face of network errors, using HTTP range retrieval requests, or switching to a streaming protocol. The user agent must consider a resource erroneous only if it has given up trying to fetch it.
To determine the format of the media resource, the user agent must use the rules for sniffing audio and video specifically.
While the load is not suspended (see below), every 350ms (±200ms) or for every byte
received, whichever is least frequent, queue a task to fire an event named progress at the element.
The networking task source tasks to process the data as it is being fetched must each immediately queue a task to run the first appropriate steps from the media data processing steps list below. (A new task is used for this so that the work described below occurs relative to the media element event task source rather than the networking task source.)
When the networking task source has queued the last task as part of fetching the media resource (i.e. once the download has completed), if the fetching process completes without errors, including decoding the media data, and if all of the data is available to the user agent without network access, then, the user agent must move on to the final step below. This might never happen, e.g. when streaming an infinite resource such as Web radio, or if the resource is longer than the user agent's ability to cache data.
While the user agent might still need network access to obtain parts of the media resource, the user agent must remain on this step.
For example, if the user agent has discarded the first half of a video, the
user agent will remain at this step even once the playback has
ended, because there is always the chance the user will seek back to the start. In fact,
in this situation, once playback has ended, the user agent
will end up firing a suspend event, as described
earlier.
The resource described by the current media resource, if any, contains the media data. It is CORS-same-origin.
If the current media resource is a raw data stream (e.g. from a
File object), then to determine the format of the media resource,
the user agent must use the rules for sniffing audio and video specifically.
Otherwise, if the data stream is pre-decoded, then the format is the format given by the
relevant specification.
Whenever new data for the current media resource becomes available, queue a task to run the first appropriate steps from the media data processing steps list below.
When the current media resource is permanently exhausted (e.g. all the bytes of
a Blob have been processed), if there were no decoding errors, then the user
agent must move on to the final step below. This might never happen, e.g. if the
current media resource is a MediaStream.
The media data processing steps list is as follows:
DNS errors, HTTP 4xx and 5xx errors (and equivalents in other protocols), and other fatal network errors that occur before the user agent has established whether the current media resource is usable, as well as the file using an unsupported container format, or using unsupported codecs for all the data, must cause the user agent to execute the following steps:
The user agent should cancel the fetching process.
Abort this subalgorithm, returning to the resource selection algorithm.
Create an AudioTrack object to represent the audio track.
Update the media element's audioTracks attribute's AudioTrackList
object with the new AudioTrack object.
Let enable be unknown.
If either the media resource or the URL of the current media resource indicate a particular set of audio tracks to enable, or if the user agent has information that would facilitate the selection of specific audio tracks to improve the user's experience, then: if this audio track is one of the ones to enable, then set enable to true, otherwise, set enable to false.
This could be triggered by media fragment syntax, but it could also be triggered e.g. by the user agent selecting a 5.1 surround sound audio track over a stereo audio track.
If enable is still unknown, then, if the media element does not yet have an enabled audio track, then set enable to true, otherwise, set enable to false.
If enable is true, then enable this audio track, otherwise, do not enable this audio track.
Fire an event named addtrack at this AudioTrackList object,
using TrackEvent, with the track
attribute initialized to the new AudioTrack object.
Create a VideoTrack object to represent the video track.
Update the media element's videoTracks attribute's VideoTrackList
object with the new VideoTrack object.
Let enable be unknown.
If either the media resource or the URL of the current media resource indicate a particular set of video tracks to enable, or if the user agent has information that would facilitate the selection of specific video tracks to improve the user's experience, then: if this video track is the first such video track, then set enable to true, otherwise, set enable to false.
This could again be triggered by media fragment syntax.
If enable is still unknown, then, if the media element does not yet have a selected video track, then set enable to true, otherwise, set enable to false.
If enable is true, then select this track and unselect any
previously selected video tracks, otherwise, do not select this video track. If other tracks
are unselected, then a change event will be fired.
Fire an event named addtrack at this VideoTrackList object,
using TrackEvent, with the track
attribute initialized to the new VideoTrack object.
This indicates that the resource is usable. The user agent must follow these substeps:
Establish the media timeline for the purposes of the current playback position and the earliest possible position, based on the media data.
Update the timeline offset to the date and time that corresponds to the zero time in the media timeline established in the previous step, if any. If no explicit time and date is given by the media resource, the timeline offset must be set to Not-a-Number (NaN).
Set the current playback position and the official playback position to the earliest possible position.
Update the duration attribute with the time of
the last frame of the resource, if known, on the media timeline established
above. If it is not known (e.g. a stream that is in principle infinite), update the duration attribute to the value positive Infinity.
The user agent will queue a task
to fire an event named durationchange at the element at this point.
For video elements, set the videoWidth and videoHeight attributes, and queue a task
to fire an event named resize at the media element.
Further resize events will be fired
if the dimensions subsequently change.
Set the readyState attribute to HAVE_METADATA.
A loadedmetadata DOM event
will be fired as part of setting the readyState attribute to a new value.
Let jumped be false.
If the media element's default playback start position is greater than zero, then seek to that time, and let jumped be true.
Let the media element's default playback start position be zero.
Let the initial playback position be zero.
If either the media resource or the URL of the current media resource indicate a particular start time, then set the initial playback position to that time and, if jumped is still false, seek to that time.
For example, with media formats that support media fragment syntax, the fragment can be used to indicate a start position.
If there is no enabled audio track, then
enable an audio track. This will cause a change event to be fired.
If there is no selected video track,
then select a video track. This will cause a change event to be fired.
Once the readyState attribute reaches HAVE_CURRENT_DATA, after
the loadeddata event has been fired, set the
element's delaying-the-load-event flag to false. This stops delaying the load event.
A user agent that is attempting to reduce network usage while still fetching
the metadata for each media resource would also stop buffering at this point,
following the rules described previously, which involve the
networkState attribute switching to the NETWORK_IDLE value and a suspend event firing.
The user agent is required to determine the duration of the media resource and go through this step before playing.
Fire an event named progress at the media element.
Set the networkState to NETWORK_IDLE and fire an event named
suspend at the media element.
If the user agent ever discards any media data and then needs to resume the
network activity to obtain it again, then it must queue a task to set the networkState to NETWORK_LOADING.
If the user agent can keep the media resource loaded, then the algorithm will continue to its final step below, which aborts the algorithm.
Fatal network errors that occur after the user agent has established whether the current media resource is usable (i.e. once the media element's
readyState attribute is no longer HAVE_NOTHING) must cause the user agent to execute the
following steps:
The user agent should cancel the fetching process.
Set the error attribute to the result of
creating a MediaError with MEDIA_ERR_NETWORK.
Set the element's networkState attribute
to the NETWORK_IDLE value.
Set the element's delaying-the-load-event flag to false. This stops delaying the load event.
Fire an event named error at the media element.
Abort the overall resource selection algorithm.
Fatal errors in decoding the media data that occur after the user agent has
established whether the current media resource is usable (i.e. once the media element's
readyState attribute is no longer HAVE_NOTHING) must cause the
user agent to execute the following steps:
The user agent should cancel the fetching process.
Set the error attribute to the result of
creating a MediaError with MEDIA_ERR_DECODE.
Set the element's networkState attribute
to the NETWORK_IDLE value.
Set the element's delaying-the-load-event flag to false. This stops delaying the load event.
Fire an event named error at the media element.
Abort the overall resource selection algorithm.
The fetching process is aborted by the user, e.g. because the user
pressed a "stop" button, the user agent must execute the following steps. These steps are not
followed if the load() method itself is invoked while
these steps are running, as the steps above handle that particular kind of abort.
The user agent should cancel the fetching process.
Set the error attribute to the result of
creating a MediaError with MEDIA_ERR_ABORTED.
Fire an event named abort at the media element.
If the media element's readyState
attribute has a value equal to HAVE_NOTHING, set
the element's networkState attribute to the
NETWORK_EMPTY value, set the element's
show poster flag to true, and fire an
event named emptied at the element.
Otherwise, set the element's networkState
attribute to the NETWORK_IDLE value.
Set the element's delaying-the-load-event flag to false. This stops delaying the load event.
Abort the overall resource selection algorithm.
The server returning data that is partially usable but cannot be optimally rendered must cause the user agent to render just the bits it can handle, and ignore the rest.
If the media data is CORS-same-origin, run the steps to expose a media-resource-specific text track with the relevant data.
Cross-origin videos do not expose their subtitles, since that would allow attacks such as hostile sites reading subtitles from confidential videos on a user's intranet.
Final step: If the user agent ever reaches this step (which can only happen if the entire resource gets loaded and kept available): abort the overall resource selection algorithm.
When a media element is to forget the media element's media-resource-specific
tracks, the user agent must remove from the media element's list of text
tracks all the media-resource-specific
text tracks, then empty the media element's audioTracks attribute's AudioTrackList object,
then empty the media element's videoTracks
attribute's VideoTrackList object. No events (in particular, no removetrack events) are fired as part of this; the error and emptied
events, fired by the algorithms that invoke this one, can be used instead.
The preload attribute is an enumerated
attribute. The following table lists the keywords and states for the attribute — the
keywords in the left column map to the states in the cell in the second column on the same row as
the keyword. The attribute can be changed even once the media resource is being
buffered or played; the descriptions in the table below are to be interpreted with that in
mind.
| Keyword | State | Brief description |
|---|---|---|
none
| None | Hints to the user agent that either the author does not expect the user to need the media resource, or that the server wants to minimize unnecessary traffic. This state does not provide a hint regarding how aggressively to actually download the media resource if buffering starts anyway (e.g. once the user hits "play"). |
metadata
| Metadata | Hints to the user agent that the author does not expect the user to need the media resource, but that fetching the resource metadata (dimensions, track list, duration, etc), and maybe even the first few frames, is reasonable. If the user agent precisely fetches no more than the metadata, then the media element will end up with its readyState attribute set to HAVE_METADATA; typically though, some frames will be obtained as well and it will probably be HAVE_CURRENT_DATA or HAVE_FUTURE_DATA.
When the media resource is playing, hints to the user agent that bandwidth is to be considered scarce, e.g. suggesting throttling the download so that the media data is obtained at the slowest possible rate that still maintains consistent playback.
|
auto
| Automatic | Hints to the user agent that the user agent can put the user's needs first without risk to the server, up to and including optimistically downloading the entire resource. |
The empty string is also a valid keyword, and maps to the Automatic state. The attribute's missing value default is user-agent defined, though the Metadata state is suggested as a compromise between reducing server load and providing an optimal user experience.
Authors might switch the attribute from "none" or "metadata" to "auto" dynamically once the user begins playback. For
example, on a page with many videos this might be used to indicate that the many videos are not to
be downloaded unless requested, but that once one is requested it is to be downloaded
aggressively.
The preload attribute is intended to provide a hint to
the user agent about what the author thinks will lead to the best user experience. The attribute
may be ignored altogether, for example based on explicit user preferences or based on the
available connectivity.
The preload IDL attribute must
reflect the content attribute of the same name, limited to only known
values.
The autoplay attribute can override the
preload attribute (since if the media plays, it naturally
has to buffer first, regardless of the hint given by the preload attribute). Including both is not an error, however.
bufferedReturns a TimeRanges object that represents the ranges of the media
resource that the user agent has buffered.
The buffered attribute must return a new
static normalized TimeRanges object that represents the ranges of the
media resource, if any, that the user agent has buffered, at the time the attribute
is evaluated. Users agents must accurately determine the ranges available, even for media streams
where this can only be determined by tedious inspection.
Typically this will be a single range anchored at the zero point, but if, e.g. the user agent uses HTTP range requests in response to seeking, then there could be multiple ranges.
User agents may discard previously buffered data.
Thus, a time position included within a range of the objects return by the buffered attribute at one time can end up being not included in
the range(s) of objects returned by the same attribute at later times.
durationReturns the length of the media resource, in seconds, assuming that the start of the media resource is at time zero.
Returns NaN if the duration isn't available.
Returns Infinity for unbounded streams.
currentTime [ = value ]Returns the official playback position, in seconds.
Can be set, to seek to the given time.
A media resource has a media timeline that maps times (in seconds) to positions in the media resource. The origin of a timeline is its earliest defined position. The duration of a timeline is its last defined position.
Establishing the media
timeline: if the media resource somehow specifies an explicit timeline whose
origin is not negative (i.e. gives each frame a specific time offset and gives the first frame a
zero or positive offset), then the media timeline should be that timeline. (Whether
the media resource can specify a timeline or not depends on the media resource's format.) If the media resource specifies an
explicit start time and date, then that time and date should be considered the zero point
in the media timeline; the timeline offset will be the time and date,
exposed using the getStartDate() method.
If the media resource has a discontinuous timeline, the user agent must extend the timeline used at the start of the resource across the entire resource, so that the media timeline of the media resource increases linearly starting from the earliest possible position (as defined below), even if the underlying media data has out-of-order or even overlapping time codes.
For example, if two clips have been concatenated into one video file, but the video format exposes the original times for the two clips, the video data might expose a timeline that goes, say, 00:15..00:29 and then 00:05..00:38. However, the user agent would not expose those times; it would instead expose the times as 00:15..00:29 and 00:29..01:02, as a single video.
In the rare case of a media resource that does not have an explicit timeline, the
zero time on the media timeline should correspond to the first frame of the
media resource. In the even rarer case of a media resource with no
explicit timings of any kind, not even frame durations, the user agent must itself determine the
time for each frame in a user-agent-defined manner.
An example of a file format with no explicit timeline but with explicit frame
durations is the Animated GIF format. An example of a file format with no explicit timings at all
is the JPEG-push format (multipart/x-mixed-replace with JPEG frames, often
used as the format for MJPEG streams).
If, in the case of a resource with no timing information, the user agent will nonetheless be able to seek to an earlier point than the first frame originally provided by the server, then the zero time should correspond to the earliest seekable time of the media resource; otherwise, it should correspond to the first frame received from the server (the point in the media resource at which the user agent began receiving the stream).
At the time of writing, there is no known format that lacks explicit frame time offsets yet still supports seeking to a frame before the first frame sent by the server.
Consider a stream from a TV broadcaster, which begins streaming on a sunny Friday afternoon in
October, and always sends connecting user agents the media data on the same media timeline, with
its zero time set to the start of this stream. Months later, user agents connecting to this
stream will find that the first frame they receive has a time with millions of seconds. The getStartDate() method would always return the date that the
broadcast started; this would allow controllers to display real times in their scrubber (e.g.
"2:30pm") rather than a time relative to when the broadcast began ("8 months, 4 hours, 12
minutes, and 23 seconds").
Consider a stream that carries a video with several concatenated fragments, broadcast by a
server that does not allow user agents to request specific times but instead just streams the
video data in a predetermined order, with the first frame delivered always being identified as
the frame with time zero. If a user agent connects to this stream and receives fragments defined
as covering timestamps 2010-03-20 23:15:00 UTC to 2010-03-21 00:05:00 UTC and 2010-02-12 14:25:00
UTC to 2010-02-12 14:35:00 UTC, it would expose this with a media timeline starting
at 0s and extending to 3,600s (one hour). Assuming the streaming server disconnected at the end
of the second clip, the duration attribute would then
return 3,600. The getStartDate() method would return a
Date object with a time corresponding to 2010-03-20 23:15:00 UTC. However, if a
different user agent connected five minutes later, it would (presumably) receive
fragments covering timestamps 2010-03-20 23:20:00 UTC to 2010-03-21 00:05:00 UTC and 2010-02-12
14:25:00 UTC to 2010-02-12 14:35:00 UTC, and would expose this with a media timeline
starting at 0s and extending to 3,300s (fifty five minutes). In this case, the getStartDate() method would return a Date object
with a time corresponding to 2010-03-20 23:20:00 UTC.
In both of these examples, the seekable attribute
would give the ranges that the controller would want to actually display in its UI; typically, if
the servers don't support seeking to arbitrary times, this would be the range of time from the
moment the user agent connected to the stream up to the latest frame that the user agent has
obtained; however, if the user agent starts discarding earlier information, the actual range
might be shorter.
In any case, the user agent must ensure that the earliest possible position (as defined below) using the established media timeline, is greater than or equal to zero.
The media timeline also has an associated clock. Which clock is used is user-agent defined, and may be media resource-dependent, but it should approximate the user's wall clock.
Media elements have a current playback position, which must initially (i.e. in the absence of media data) be zero seconds. The current playback position is a time on the media timeline.
Media elements also have an official playback position, which must initially be set to zero seconds. The official playback position is an approximation of the current playback position that is kept stable while scripts are running.
Media elements also have a default playback start position, which must initially be set to zero seconds. This time is used to allow the element to be seeked even before the media is loaded.
Each media element has a show poster flag. When a media
element is created, this flag must be set to true. This flag is used to control when the
user agent is to show a poster frame for a video element instead of showing the video
contents.
The currentTime attribute must, on
getting, return the media element's default playback start position,
unless that is zero, in which case it must return the element's official playback
position. The returned value must be expressed in seconds. On setting, if the media
element's readyState is HAVE_NOTHING, then it must set the media
element's default playback start position to the new value; otherwise, it must
set the official playback position to the new value and then seek to the new value. The new value must be interpreted as being in
seconds.
If the media resource is a streaming resource, then the user agent might be unable to obtain certain parts of the resource after it has expired from its buffer. Similarly, some media resources might have a media timeline that doesn't start at zero. The earliest possible position is the earliest position in the stream or resource that the user agent can ever obtain again. It is also a time on the media timeline.
The earliest possible position is not explicitly exposed in the API;
it corresponds to the start time of the first range in the seekable attribute's TimeRanges object, if any, or
the current playback position otherwise.
When the earliest possible position changes, then: if the current playback
position is before the earliest possible position, the user agent must seek to the earliest possible position; otherwise, if
the user agent has not fired a timeupdate event at
the element in the past 15 to 250ms and is not still running event handlers for such an event,
then the user agent must queue a task to fire an
event named timeupdate at the element.
Because of the above requirement and the requirement in the resource fetch algorithm that kicks in when the metadata of the clip becomes known, the current playback position can never be less than the earliest possible position.
If at any time the user agent learns that an audio or video track has ended and all media data relating to that track corresponds to parts of the media timeline that are before the earliest possible position, the user agent may queue a task to run these steps:
Remove the track from the audioTracks
attribute's AudioTrackList object or the videoTracks attribute's VideoTrackList object
as appropriate.
Fire an event named removetrack at the media element's
aforementioned AudioTrackList or VideoTrackList object, using
TrackEvent, with the track attribute
initialized to the AudioTrack or VideoTrack object representing the
track.
The duration attribute must return the time
of the end of the media resource, in seconds, on the media timeline. If
no media data is available, then the attributes must return the Not-a-Number (NaN)
value. If the media resource is not known to be bounded (e.g. streaming radio, or a
live event with no announced end time), then the attribute must return the positive Infinity
value.
The user agent must determine the duration of the media resource before playing
any part of the media data and before setting readyState to a value equal to or greater than HAVE_METADATA, even if doing so requires fetching multiple
parts of the resource.
When the length of the media resource changes to a known value
(e.g. from being unknown to known, or from a previously established length to a new length) the
user agent must queue a task to fire an
event named durationchange at the
media element. (The event is not fired when the duration is reset as part of loading
a new media resource.) If the duration is changed such that the current playback
position ends up being greater than the time of the end of the media resource,
then the user agent must also seek to the time of the end of
the media resource.
If an "infinite" stream ends for some reason, then the duration would change
from positive Infinity to the time of the last frame or sample in the stream, and the durationchange event would be fired. Similarly, if the
user agent initially estimated the media resource's duration instead of determining
it precisely, and later revises the estimate based on new information, then the duration would
change and the durationchange event would be
fired.
Some video files also have an explicit date and time corresponding to the zero time in the media timeline, known as the timeline offset. Initially, the timeline offset must be set to Not-a-Number (NaN).
The getStartDate() method must return a new Date object representing the current
timeline offset.
The loop attribute is a boolean
attribute that, if specified, indicates that the media element is to seek back
to the start of the media resource upon reaching the end.
The loop IDL attribute must reflect
the content attribute of the same name.
readyStateReturns a value that expresses the current state of the element with respect to rendering the current playback position, from the codes in the list below.
Media elements have a ready state, which describes to what degree they are ready to be rendered at the current playback position. The possible values are as follows; the ready state of a media element at any particular time is the greatest value describing the state of the element:
HAVE_NOTHING (numeric value 0)No information regarding the media resource is available. No data for the
current playback position is available. Media
elements whose networkState attribute are set
to NETWORK_EMPTY are always in the HAVE_NOTHING state.
HAVE_METADATA (numeric value 1)Enough of the resource has been obtained that the duration of the resource is available.
In the case of a video element, the dimensions of the video are also available. No
media data is available for the immediate current playback
position.
HAVE_CURRENT_DATA (numeric value 2)Data for the immediate current playback position is available, but either not
enough data is available that the user agent could successfully advance the current
playback position in the direction of playback at all without immediately
reverting to the HAVE_METADATA state, or there is no
more data to obtain in the direction of playback. For example, in video this
corresponds to the user agent having data from the current frame, but not the next frame, when
the current playback position is at the end of the current frame; and to when playback has ended.
HAVE_FUTURE_DATA (numeric value 3)Data for the immediate current playback position is available, as well as
enough data for the user agent to advance the current playback position in the
direction of playback at least a little without immediately reverting to the HAVE_METADATA state, and the text tracks are
ready. For example, in video this corresponds to the user agent having data for at least
the current frame and the next frame when the current playback position is at the
instant in time between the two frames, or to the user agent having the video data for the
current frame and audio data to keep playing at least a little when the current playback
position is in the middle of a frame. The user agent cannot be in this state if playback has ended, as the current playback position
can never advance in this case.
HAVE_ENOUGH_DATA (numeric value 4)All the conditions described for the HAVE_FUTURE_DATA state are met, and, in addition,
either of the following conditions is also true:
playbackRate, would not overtake the available data
before playback reaches the end of the media resource.In practice, the difference between HAVE_METADATA and HAVE_CURRENT_DATA is negligible. Really the only time
the difference is relevant is when painting a video element onto a
canvas, where it distinguishes the case where something will be drawn (HAVE_CURRENT_DATA or greater) from the case where
nothing is drawn (HAVE_METADATA or less). Similarly,
the difference between HAVE_CURRENT_DATA (only
the current frame) and HAVE_FUTURE_DATA (at least
this frame and the next) can be negligible (in the extreme, only one frame). The only time that
distinction really matters is when a page provides an interface for "frame-by-frame"
navigation.
When the ready state of a media element whose networkState is not NETWORK_EMPTY changes, the user agent must follow the steps
given below:
Apply the first applicable set of substeps from the following list:
HAVE_NOTHING,
and the new ready state is HAVE_METADATAQueue a task to fire an event named
loadedmetadata at the element.
Before this task is run, as part of the event loop mechanism, the
rendering will have been updated to resize the video element if appropriate.
HAVE_METADATA and the new ready state is HAVE_CURRENT_DATA or greaterIf this is the first time this occurs for this media
element since the load() algorithm was last
invoked, the user agent must queue a task to fire an event named loadeddata at the element.
If the new ready state is HAVE_FUTURE_DATA
or HAVE_ENOUGH_DATA, then the relevant steps
below must then be run also.
HAVE_FUTURE_DATA or more, and the new ready state is
HAVE_CURRENT_DATA or lessIf the media element was potentially
playing before its readyState attribute
changed to a value lower than HAVE_FUTURE_DATA, and the element has not
ended playback, and playback has not stopped due to errors,
paused for user interaction, or paused for in-band content, the user
agent must queue a task to fire an event
named timeupdate at the element, and queue
a task to fire an event named waiting at the element.
HAVE_CURRENT_DATA or less, and the new ready state
is HAVE_FUTURE_DATAThe user agent must queue a task to fire an
event named canplay at the element.
If the element's paused attribute is false, the user
agent must notify about playing for the element.
HAVE_ENOUGH_DATAIf the previous ready state was HAVE_CURRENT_DATA or less, the user agent must
queue a task to fire an event named
canplay at the element, and, if the element's paused attribute is false, notify about playing
for the element.
The user agent must queue a task to fire an
event named canplaythrough at the
element.
If the element is not eligible for autoplay, then the user agent must abort these substeps.
The user agent may run the following substeps:
This specification doesn't define the precise timing for when the intersection is tested, but it is suggested that the timing match that of the Intersection Observer API. [INTERSECTIONOBSERVER]
paused attribute to false.play at the element.Alternatively, if the element is a video element, the user agent may start
observing whether the element intersects the
viewport. When the element starts intersecting
the viewport, if the element is still eligible for autoplay, run the
substeps above. Optionally, when the element stops intersecting the viewport, if the can autoplay flag is still
true and the autoplay attribute is still specified,
run the following substeps:
This specification doesn't define the precise timing for when the intersection is tested, but it is suggested that the timing match that of the Intersection Observer API. [INTERSECTIONOBSERVER]
pause at the element.The substeps for playing and pausing can run multiple times as the element starts or stops intersecting the viewport, as long as the can autoplay flag is true.
User agents do not need to support autoplay, and it is suggested that user
agents honor user preferences on the matter. Authors are urged to use the autoplay attribute rather than using script to force the
video to play, so as to allow the user to override the behavior if so desired.
It is possible for the ready state of a media element to jump between these states
discontinuously. For example, the state of a media element can jump straight from HAVE_METADATA to HAVE_ENOUGH_DATA without passing through the HAVE_CURRENT_DATA and HAVE_FUTURE_DATA states.
The readyState IDL attribute must, on
getting, return the value described above that describes the current ready state of the
media element.
The autoplay attribute is a boolean
attribute. When present, the user agent (as described in the algorithm
described herein) will automatically begin playback of the media resource as
soon as it can do so without stopping.
Authors are urged to use the autoplay
attribute rather than using script to trigger automatic playback, as this allows the user to
override the automatic playback when it is not desired, e.g. when using a screen reader. Authors
are also encouraged to consider not using the automatic playback behavior at all, and instead to
let the user agent wait for the user to start playback explicitly.
The autoplay IDL attribute must
reflect the content attribute of the same name.
Spec bugs: 28032
pausedReturns true if playback is paused; false otherwise.
endedReturns true if playback has reached the end of the media resource.
defaultPlaybackRate [ = value ]Returns the default rate of playback, for when the user is not fast-forwarding or reversing through the media resource.
Can be set, to change the default rate of playback.
The default rate has no direct effect on playback, but if the user switches to a fast-forward mode, when they return to the normal playback mode, it is expected that the rate of playback will be returned to the default rate of playback.
playbackRate [ = value ]Returns the current rate playback, where 1.0 is normal speed.
Can be set, to change the rate of playback.
playedReturns a TimeRanges object that represents the ranges of the media
resource that the user agent has played.
play()Sets the paused attribute to false, loading the
media resource and beginning playback if necessary. If the playback had ended, will
restart it from the start.
pause()Sets the paused attribute to true, loading the
media resource if necessary.
The paused attribute represents whether the
media element is paused or not. The attribute must initially be true.
A media element is a blocked media element if its readyState attribute is in the HAVE_NOTHING state, the HAVE_METADATA state, or the HAVE_CURRENT_DATA state, or if the element has
paused for user interaction or paused for in-band content.
A media element is said to be potentially playing when its paused attribute is false, the element has not ended
playback, playback has not stopped due to errors, and the element is not a
blocked media element.
A waiting DOM event can be fired as a result of an element that is
potentially playing stopping playback due to its readyState attribute changing to a value lower than HAVE_FUTURE_DATA.
A media element is said to be eligible for autoplay when its
can autoplay flag is true, its paused attribute
is true, the element has an autoplay attribute
specified, and the element's node document's active sandboxing flag set
does not have the sandboxed automatic features browsing context flag set.
A media element is said to be allowed to play if the user agent and the system allow media playback in the current context.
For example, a user agent could require that playback is triggered by user activation, but an exception could be made to allow playback while muted.
A media element is said to have ended playback when:
readyState attribute is HAVE_METADATA or greater, and
Either:
loop
attribute specified.
Or:
The ended attribute must return true if, the
last time the event loop reached step 1, the media element had
ended playback and the direction of playback was forwards, and false
otherwise.
A media element is said to have stopped due to errors when the
element's readyState attribute is HAVE_METADATA or greater, and the user agent encounters a non-fatal error during the processing of the
media data, and due to that error, is not able to play the content at the
current playback position.
A media element is said to have paused for user interaction when its
paused attribute is false, the readyState attribute is either HAVE_FUTURE_DATA or HAVE_ENOUGH_DATA and the user agent has reached a point
in the media resource where the user has to make a selection for the resource to
continue.
It is possible for a media element to have both ended playback and paused for user interaction at the same time.
When a media element that is potentially playing stops playing
because it has paused for user interaction, the user agent must queue a
task to fire an event named timeupdate at the element.
A media element is said to have paused for in-band content when its
paused attribute is false, the readyState attribute is either HAVE_FUTURE_DATA or HAVE_ENOUGH_DATA and the user agent has suspended
playback of the media resource in order to play content that is temporally anchored
to the media resource and has a non-zero length, or to play content that is
temporally anchored to a segment of the media resource but has a length longer than
that segment.
One example of when a media element would be paused for in-band content is when the user agent is playing audio descriptions from an external WebVTT file, and the synthesized speech generated for a cue is longer than the time between the text track cue start time and the text track cue end time.
When the current playback position reaches the end of the media resource when the direction of playback is forwards, then the user agent must follow these steps:
If the media element has a loop
attribute specified, then seek to the earliest
possible position of the media resource and abort these steps.
As defined above, the ended IDL attribute starts
returning true once the event loop returns to step 1.
Queue a task to run these steps:
Fire an event named timeupdate at the media element.
If the media element has ended playback, the direction of playback is forwards, and paused is false, then:
Set the paused attribute to true.
Fire an event named pause at the media element.
Take pending play promises and reject pending play promises
with the result and an "AbortError"
DOMException.
Fire an event named ended at the media element.
When the current playback position reaches the earliest possible
position of the media resource when the direction of playback is
backwards, then the user agent must only queue a task to fire an event named timeupdate at the element.
The word "reaches" here does not imply that the current playback position needs to have changed during normal playback; it could be via seeking, for instance.
The defaultPlaybackRate attribute
gives the desired speed at which the media resource is to play, as a multiple of its
intrinsic speed. The attribute is mutable: on getting it must return the last value it was set to,
or 1.0 if it hasn't yet been set; on setting the attribute must be set to the new value.
The defaultPlaybackRate is used
by the user agent when it exposes a user
interface to the user.
The playbackRate attribute gives the
effective playback rate, which is the speed at which the media resource plays, as a
multiple of its intrinsic speed. If it is not equal to the defaultPlaybackRate, then the implication is that
the user is using a feature such as fast forward or slow motion playback. The attribute is
mutable: on getting it must return the last value it was set to, or 1.0 if it hasn't yet been set;
on setting the attribute must be set to the new value, and the playback will change speed (if the
element is potentially playing).
When the defaultPlaybackRate
or playbackRate attributes change value (either by
being set by script or by being changed directly by the user agent, e.g. in response to user
control) the user agent must queue a task to fire
an event named ratechange at the media
element.
The played attribute must return a new static
normalized TimeRanges object that represents the ranges of points on the
media timeline of the media resource reached through the usual monotonic
increase of the current playback position during normal playback, if any, at the time
the attribute is evaluated.
Each media element has a list of pending play promises, which must initially be empty.
To take pending play promises for a media element, the user agent must run the following steps:
Let promises be an empty list of promises.
Copy the media element's list of pending play promises to promises.
Clear the media element's list of pending play promises.
To resolve pending play promises for a media element with a list of promises promises, the user agent must resolve each promise in promises with undefined.
To reject pending play promises for a media element with a list of promise promises and an exception name error, the user agent must reject each promise in promises with error.
To notify about playing for a media element, the user agent must run the following steps:
Take pending play promises and let promises be the result.
Queue a task to run these steps:
Fire an event named playing at the element.
Resolve pending play promises with promises.
When the play() method on a media
element is invoked, the user agent must run the following steps.
If the media element is not allowed to play, return a promise
rejected with a "NotAllowedError" DOMException and abort
these steps.
If the media element's error attribute is
not null and its code is MEDIA_ERR_SRC_NOT_SUPPORTED, return a
promise rejected with a "NotSupportedError" DOMException
and abort these steps.
This means that the dedicated media source failure steps have run.
Playback is not possible until the media element load algorithm clears the error attribute.
Let promise be a new promise and append promise to the list of pending play promises.
If the media element's networkState attribute has the value NETWORK_EMPTY, invoke the media element's
resource selection algorithm.
If the playback has ended and the direction of playback is forwards, seek to the earliest possible position of the media resource.
This will cause the user agent to queue a
task to fire an event named timeupdate at the media element.
If the media element's paused attribute
is true, then:
Change the value of paused to false.
If the show poster flag is true, set the element's show poster flag to false and run the time marches on steps.
Queue a task to fire an event
named play at the element.
If the media element's readyState
attribute has the value HAVE_NOTHING, HAVE_METADATA, or HAVE_CURRENT_DATA, queue a task to
fire an event named waiting at the element.
Otherwise, the media element's readyState attribute has the value HAVE_FUTURE_DATA or HAVE_ENOUGH_DATA: notify about playing
for the element.
Otherwise, if the media element's readyState attribute has the value HAVE_FUTURE_DATA or HAVE_ENOUGH_DATA, take pending play
promises and queue a task to resolve pending play promises with
the result.
The media element is already playing. However, it's possible that promise will be rejected before the queued task is run.
Set the media element's can autoplay flag to false.
Return promise.
When the pause() method is invoked, and when
the user agent is required to pause the media element, the user agent must run the
following steps:
If the media element's networkState attribute has the value NETWORK_EMPTY, invoke the media element's
resource selection algorithm.
Run the internal pause steps for the media element.
The internal pause steps for a media element are as follows:
Set the media element's can autoplay flag to false.
If the media element's paused attribute
is false, run the following steps:
Change the value of paused to true.
Take pending play promises and let promises be the result.
Queue a task to run these steps:
Fire an event named timeupdate at the element.
Fire an event named pause at the element.
Reject pending play promises with promises and an
"AbortError" DOMException.
Set the official playback position to the current playback position.
If the element's playbackRate is positive or zero,
then the direction of playback is forwards. Otherwise, it is backwards.
When a media element is potentially playing and
its Document is a fully active Document, its current
playback position must increase monotonically at the element's playbackRate units of media time per unit time of the
media timeline's clock. (This specification always refers to this as an
increase, but that increase could actually be a decrease if the element's playbackRate is negative.)
Spec bugs: 28236
The element's playbackRate can be
0.0, in which case the current playback position doesn't move, despite playback not
being paused (paused doesn't become true, and the pause event doesn't fire).
This specification doesn't define how the user agent achieves the appropriate playback rate — depending on the protocol and media available, it is plausible that the user agent could negotiate with the server to have the server provide the media data at the appropriate rate, so that (except for the period between when the rate is changed and when the server updates the stream's playback rate) the client doesn't actually have to drop or interpolate any frames.
Any time the user agent provides a stable state, the official playback position must be set to the current playback position.
While the direction of playback is backwards, any corresponding audio must be
muted. While the element's playbackRate is so low or so high that the user agent
cannot play audio usefully, the corresponding audio must also be muted. If the element's playbackRate is not 1.0, the user agent may apply pitch
adjustments to the audio as necessary to render it faithfully.
Media elements that are potentially playing while not in a document must not play any video, but should play any audio component. Media elements must not stop playing just because all references to them have been removed; only once a media element is in a state where no further audio could ever be played by that element may the element be garbage collected.
It is possible for an element to which no explicit references exist to play audio,
even if such an element is not still actively playing: for instance, it could be unpaused but
stalled waiting for content to buffer, or it could be still buffering, but with a
suspend event listener that begins playback. Even a
media element whose media resource has no audio tracks could eventually play audio
again if it had an event listener that changes the media resource.
Each media element has a list of newly introduced cues, which must be initially empty. Whenever a text track cue is added to the list of cues of a text track that is in the list of text tracks for a media element, that cue must be added to the media element's list of newly introduced cues. Whenever a text track is added to the list of text tracks for a media element, all of the cues in that text track's list of cues must be added to the media element's list of newly introduced cues. When a media element's list of newly introduced cues has new cues added while the media element's show poster flag is not set, then the user agent must run the time marches on steps.
When a text track cue is removed from the list of cues of a text track that is in the list of text tracks for a media element, and whenever a text track is removed from the list of text tracks of a media element, if the media element's show poster flag is not set, then the user agent must run the time marches on steps.
When the current playback position of a media element changes (e.g. due to playback or seeking), the user agent must run the time marches on steps. If the current playback position changes while the steps are running, then the user agent must wait for the steps to complete, and then must immediately rerun the steps. (These steps are thus run as often as possible or needed — if one iteration takes a long time, this can cause certain cues to be skipped over as the user agent rushes ahead to "catch up".)
The time marches on steps are as follows:
Let current cues be a list of cues, initialized to contain all the cues of all the or showing text tracks of the media element (not the disabled ones) whose start times are less than or equal to the current playback position and whose end times are greater than the current playback position.
Let other cues be a list of cues, initialized to contain all the cues of and showing text tracks of the media element that are not present in current cues.
Let last time be the current playback position at the time this algorithm was last run for this media element, if this is not the first time it has run.
If the current playback position has, since the last time this algorithm was run, only changed through its usual monotonic increase during normal playback, then let missed cues be the list of cues in other cues whose start times are greater than or equal to last time and whose end times are less than or equal to the current playback position. Otherwise, let missed cues be an empty list.
Remove all the cues in missed cues that are also in the media element's list of newly introduced cues, and then empty the element's list of newly introduced cues.
If the time was reached through the usual monotonic increase of the current playback
position during normal playback, and if the user agent has not fired a timeupdate event at the element in the past 15 to 250ms and
is not still running event handlers for such an event, then the user agent must queue a
task to fire an event named timeupdate at the element. (In the other cases, such as
explicit seeks, relevant events get fired as part of the overall process of changing the
current playback position.)
The event thus is not to be fired faster than about 66Hz or slower than 4Hz (assuming the event handlers don't take longer than 250ms to run). User agents are encouraged to vary the frequency of the event based on the system load and the average cost of processing the event each time, so that the UI updates are not any more frequent than the user agent can comfortably handle while decoding the video.
If all of the cues in current cues have their text track cue active flag set, none of the cues in other cues have their text track cue active flag set, and missed cues is empty, then abort these steps.
If the time was reached through the usual monotonic increase of the current playback position during normal playback, and there are cues in other cues that have their text track cue pause-on-exit flag set and that either have their text track cue active flag set or are also in missed cues, then immediately pause the media element.
In the other cases, such as explicit seeks, playback is not paused by going past the end time of a cue, even if that cue has its text track cue pause-on-exit flag set.
Let events be a list of tasks, initially empty. Each task in this list will be associated with a text track, a text track cue, and a time, which are used to sort the list before the tasks are queued.
Let affected tracks be a list of text tracks, initially empty.
When the steps below say to prepare an event named event for a text track cue target with a time time, the user agent must run these steps:
Let track be the text track with which the text track cue target is associated.
Create a task to fire an event named event at target.
Add the newly created task to events, associated with the time time, the text track track, and the text track cue target.
Add track to affected tracks.
For each text track cue in missed
cues, prepare an event named enter for the
TextTrackCue object with the text track cue start time.
For each text track cue in other
cues that either has its text track cue active flag set or is in missed cues, prepare an event named exit for the TextTrackCue object with the later of the
text track cue end time and the text track cue start time.
For each text track cue in current
cues that does not have its text track cue active flag set, prepare an
event named enter for the TextTrackCue
object with the text track cue start time.
Sort the tasks in events in ascending time order (tasks with earlier times first).
Further sort tasks in events that have the same time by the relative text track cue order of the text track cues associated with these tasks.
Finally, sort tasks in events that have
the same time and same text track cue order by placing tasks that fire enter events before
those that fire exit events.
Sort affected tracks in the same order as the text tracks appear in the media element's list of text tracks, and remove duplicates.
For each text track in affected tracks, in the list
order, queue a task to fire an event named
cuechange at the TextTrack object, and,
if the text track has a corresponding track element, to then fire an event named cuechange at the track element as
well.
Set the text track cue active flag of all the cues in the current cues, and unset the text track cue active flag of all the cues in the other cues.
Run the rules for updating the text track rendering of each of the text tracks in affected tracks that are showing, providing the text track's text track language as the fallback language if it is not the empty string. For example, for text tracks based on WebVTT, the rules for updating the display of WebVTT text tracks. [WEBVTT]
For the purposes of the algorithm above, a text track cue is considered to be part of a text track only if it is listed in the text track list of cues, not merely if it is associated with the text track.
If the media element's node document stops being a fully active document, then the playback will stop until the document is active again.
When a media element is removed
from a Document, the user agent must run the following steps:
Await a stable state, allowing the task that removed the media element from the
Document to continue. The synchronous section consists of all the
remaining steps of this algorithm. (Steps in the synchronous section are marked with
⌛.)
⌛ If the media element is in a document, abort these steps.
⌛ Run the internal pause steps for the media element.
seekingReturns true if the user agent is currently seeking.
seekableReturns a TimeRanges object that represents the ranges of the media
resource to which it is possible for the user agent to seek.
fastSeek( time )Seeks to near the given time as fast as possible, trading precision for
speed. (To seek to a precise time, use the currentTime attribute.)
This does nothing if the media resource has not been loaded.
The seeking attribute must initially have the
value false.
The fastSeek() method must seek to the time given by the method's argument, with the
approximate-for-speed flag set.
When the user agent is required to seek to a particular new playback position in the media resource, optionally with the approximate-for-speed flag set, it means that the user agent must run the following steps. This algorithm interacts closely with the event loop mechanism; in particular, it has a synchronous section (which is triggered as part of the event loop algorithm). Steps in that section are marked with ⌛.
Spec bugs: 28929
Set the media element's show poster flag to false.
If the media element's readyState
is HAVE_NOTHING, abort these steps.
If the element's seeking IDL attribute is true,
then another instance of this algorithm is already running. Abort that other instance of the
algorithm without waiting for the step that it is running to complete.
Set the seeking IDL attribute to true.
If the seek was in response to a DOM method call or setting of an IDL attribute, then continue the script. The remainder of these steps must be run in parallel. With the exception of the steps marked with ⌛, they could be aborted at any time by another instance of this algorithm being invoked.
If the new playback position is later than the end of the media resource, then let it be the end of the media resource instead.
If the new playback position is less than the earliest possible position, let it be that position instead.
If the (possibly now changed) new playback position is not in one of
the ranges given in the seekable attribute, then let it
be the position in one of the ranges given in the seekable attribute that is the nearest to the new
playback position. If two positions both satisfy that constraint (i.e. the new playback position is exactly in the middle between two ranges in the seekable attribute) then use the position that is closest to
the current playback position. If there are no ranges given in the seekable attribute then set the seeking IDL attribute to false and abort these steps.
If the approximate-for-speed flag is set, adjust the new playback position to a value that will allow for playback to resume promptly. If new playback position before this step is before current playback position, then the adjusted new playback position must also be before the current playback position. Similarly, if the new playback position before this step is after current playback position, then the adjusted new playback position must also be after the current playback position.
For example, the user agent could snap to a nearby key frame, so that it doesn't have to spend time decoding then discarding intermediate frames before resuming playback.
Queue a task to fire an event named
seeking at the element.
Set the current playback position to the new playback position.
If the media element was potentially playing
immediately before it started seeking, but seeking caused its readyState attribute to change to a value lower than HAVE_FUTURE_DATA, then a waiting event will be
fired at the element.
This step sets the current playback position, and thus can immediately trigger other conditions, such as the rules regarding when playback "reaches the end of the media resource" (part of the logic that handles looping), even before the user agent is actually able to render the media data for that position (as determined in the next step).
The currentTime attribute returns
the official playback position, not the current playback position, and
therefore gets updated before script execution, separate from this algorithm.
Wait until the user agent has established whether or not the media data for the new playback position is available, and, if it is, until it has decoded enough data to play back that position.
Await a stable state. The synchronous section consists of all the remaining steps of this algorithm. (Steps in the synchronous section are marked with ⌛.)
⌛ Set the seeking IDL attribute to
false.
⌛ Run the time marches on steps.
⌛ Queue a task to fire an event named timeupdate at the element.
⌛ Queue a task to fire an
event named seeked at the element.
The seekable attribute must return a new
static normalized TimeRanges object that represents the ranges of the
media resource, if any, that the user agent is able to seek to, at the time the
attribute is evaluated.
If the user agent can seek to anywhere in the media resource, e.g.
because it is a simple movie file and the user agent and the server support HTTP Range requests,
then the attribute would return an object with one range, whose start is the time of the first
frame (the earliest possible position, typically zero), and whose end is the same as
the time of the first frame plus the duration attribute's
value (which would equal the time of the last frame, and might be positive Infinity).
The range might be continuously changing, e.g. if the user agent is buffering a sliding window on an infinite stream. This is the behavior seen with DVRs viewing live TV, for instance.
User agents should adopt a very liberal and optimistic view of what is seekable. User agents should also buffer recent content where possible to enable seeking to be fast.
For instance, consider a large video file served on an HTTP server without support for HTTP Range requests. A browser could implement this by only buffering the current frame and data obtained for subsequent frames, never allow seeking, except for seeking to the very start by restarting the playback. However, this would be a poor implementation. A high quality implementation would buffer the last few minutes of content (or more, if sufficient storage space is available), allowing the user to jump back and rewatch something surprising without any latency, and would in addition allow arbitrary seeking by reloading the file from the start if necessary, which would be slower but still more convenient than having to literally restart the video and watch it all the way through just to get to an earlier unbuffered spot.
Media resources might be internally scripted or interactive. Thus, a media element could play in a non-linear fashion. If this happens, the user agent must act as if the algorithm for seeking was used whenever the current playback position changes in a discontinuous fashion (so that the relevant events fire).
A media resource can have multiple embedded audio and video tracks. For example, in addition to the primary video and audio tracks, a media resource could have foreign-language dubbed dialogues, director's commentaries, audio descriptions, alternative angles, or sign-language overlays.
audioTracksReturns an AudioTrackList object representing the audio tracks available in the
media resource.
videoTracksReturns a VideoTrackList object representing the video tracks available in the
media resource.
The audioTracks attribute of a
media element must return a live AudioTrackList object
representing the audio tracks available in the media element's media
resource.
The videoTracks attribute of a
media element must return a live VideoTrackList object
representing the video tracks available in the media element's media
resource.
There are only ever one AudioTrackList object and one
VideoTrackList object per media element, even if another media
resource is loaded into the element: the objects are reused. (The AudioTrack
and VideoTrack objects are not, though.)
AudioTrackList and VideoTrackList objectsSupport: audiotracksChrome for Android NoneChrome NoneUC Browser for Android NoneiOS Safari 7.0+Firefox NoneIE 10+Samsung Internet NoneOpera Mini NoneAndroid Browser NoneEdge 12+Safari 6.1+Opera None
Source: caniuse.com
The AudioTrackList and VideoTrackList interfaces are used by
attributes defined in the previous section.
interface AudioTrackList : EventTarget {
readonly attribute unsigned long length;
getter AudioTrack (unsigned long index);
AudioTrack? getTrackById(DOMString id);
attribute EventHandler onchange;
attribute EventHandler onaddtrack;
attribute EventHandler onremovetrack;
};
interface AudioTrack {
readonly attribute DOMString id;
readonly attribute DOMString kind;
readonly attribute DOMString label;
readonly attribute DOMString language;
attribute boolean enabled;
};
interface VideoTrackList : EventTarget {
readonly attribute unsigned long length;
getter VideoTrack (unsigned long index);
VideoTrack? getTrackById(DOMString id);
readonly attribute long selectedIndex;
attribute EventHandler onchange;
attribute EventHandler onaddtrack;
attribute EventHandler onremovetrack;
};
interface VideoTrack {
readonly attribute DOMString id;
readonly attribute DOMString kind;
readonly attribute DOMString label;
readonly attribute DOMString language;
attribute boolean selected;
};
audioTracks . lengthvideoTracks . lengthReturns the number of tracks in the list.
audioTracks[index]videoTracks[index]Returns the specified AudioTrack or VideoTrack object.
audioTracks . getTrackById( id )videoTracks . getTrackById( id )Returns the AudioTrack or VideoTrack object with the given identifier, or null if no track has that identifier.
ididReturns the ID of the given track. This is the ID that can be used with a fragment if the format supports media fragment
syntax, and that can be used with the getTrackById() method.
kindkindReturns the category the given track falls into. The possible track categories are given below.
labellabelReturns the label of the given track, if known, or the empty string otherwise.
languagelanguageReturns the language of the given track, if known, or the empty string otherwise.
enabled [ = value ]Returns true if the given track is active, and false otherwise.
Can be set, to change whether the track is enabled or not. If multiple audio tracks are enabled simultaneously, they are mixed.
videoTracks . selectedIndexReturns the index of the currently selected track, if any, or −1 otherwise.
selected [ = value ]Returns true if the given track is active, and false otherwise.
Can be set, to change whether the track is selected or not. Either zero or one video track is selected; selecting a new track while a previous one is selected will unselect the previous one.
An AudioTrackList object represents a dynamic list of zero or more audio tracks,
of which zero or more can be enabled at a time. Each audio track is represented by an
AudioTrack object.
A VideoTrackList object represents a dynamic list of zero or more video tracks, of
which zero or one can be selected at a time. Each video track is represented by a
VideoTrack object.
Tracks in AudioTrackList and VideoTrackList objects must be
consistently ordered. If the media resource is in a format that defines an order,
then that order must be used; otherwise, the order must be the relative order in which the tracks
are declared in the media resource. The order used is called the natural order
of the list.
Each track in one of these objects thus has an index; the first has the index 0, and each subsequent track is numbered one higher than the previous one. If a media resource dynamically adds or removes audio or video tracks, then the indices of the tracks will change dynamically. If the media resource changes entirely, then all the previous tracks will be removed and replaced with new tracks.
The AudioTrackList.length and VideoTrackList.length attributes must return
the number of tracks represented by their objects at the time of getting.
The supported property indices of AudioTrackList and
VideoTrackList objects at any instant are the numbers from zero to the number of
tracks represented by the respective object minus one, if any tracks are represented. If an
AudioTrackList or VideoTrackList object represents no tracks, it has no
supported property indices.
To determine the value of an indexed property for a
given index index in an AudioTrackList or VideoTrackList
object list, the user agent must return the AudioTrack or
VideoTrack object that represents the indexth track in list.
The AudioTrackList.getTrackById(id) and VideoTrackList.getTrackById(id) methods must return the first AudioTrack or
VideoTrack object (respectively) in the AudioTrackList or
VideoTrackList object (respectively) whose identifier is equal to the value of the
id argument (in the natural order of the list, as defined above). When no
tracks match the given argument, the methods must return null.
The AudioTrack and VideoTrack objects represent specific tracks of a
media resource. Each track can have an identifier, category, label, and language.
These aspects of a track are permanent for the lifetime of the track; even if a track is removed
from a media resource's AudioTrackList or VideoTrackList
objects, those aspects do not change.
In addition, AudioTrack objects can each be enabled or disabled; this is the audio
track's enabled state. When an AudioTrack is created, its enabled state
must be set to false (disabled). The resource fetch
algorithm can override this.
Similarly, a single VideoTrack object per VideoTrackList object can
be selected, this is the video track's selection state. When a VideoTrack is
created, its selection state must be set to false (not selected). The resource fetch algorithm can override this.
The AudioTrack.id and VideoTrack.id attributes must return the identifier
of the track, if it has one, or the empty string otherwise. If the media resource is
in a format that supports media fragment syntax, the identifier returned for a particular
track must be the same identifier that would enable the track if used as the name of a track in
the track dimension of such a fragment.
[INBAND]
For example, in Ogg files, this would be the Name header field of the track. [OGGSKELETONHEADERS]
The AudioTrack.kind and VideoTrack.kind attributes must return the category
of the track, if it has one, or the empty string otherwise.
The category of a track is the string given in the first column of the table below that is the
most appropriate for the track based on the definitions in the table's second and third columns,
as determined by the metadata included in the track in the media resource. The cell
in the third column of a row says what the category given in the cell in the first column of that
row applies to; a category is only appropriate for an audio track if it applies to audio tracks,
and a category is only appropriate for video tracks if it applies to video tracks. Categories must
only be returned for AudioTrack objects if they are appropriate for audio, and must
only be returned for VideoTrack objects if they are appropriate for video.
For Ogg files, the Role header field of the track gives the relevant metadata. For DASH media
resources, the Role element conveys the information. For WebM, only the
FlagDefault element currently maps to a value. The Sourcing In-band
Media Resource Tracks from Media Containers into HTML specification has further details.
[OGGSKELETONHEADERS] [DASH] [WEBMCG] [INBAND]
| Category | Definition | Applies to... | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
"alternative"
| A possible alternative to the main track, e.g. a different take of a song (audio), or a different angle (video). | Audio and video. | Ogg: "audio/alternate" or "video/alternate"; DASH: "alternate" without "main" and "commentary" roles, and, for audio, without the "dub" role (other roles ignored). |
"captions"
| A version of the main video track with captions burnt in. (For legacy content; new content would use text tracks.) | Video only. | DASH: "caption" and "main" roles together (other roles ignored). |
"descriptions"
| An audio description of a video track. | Audio only. | Ogg: "audio/audiodesc". |
"main"
| The primary audio or video track. | Audio and video. | Ogg: "audio/main" or "video/main"; WebM: the "FlagDefault" element is set; DASH: "main" role without "caption", "subtitle", and "dub" roles (other roles ignored). |
"main-desc"
| The primary audio track, mixed with audio descriptions. | Audio only. | AC3 audio in MPEG-2 TS: bsmod=2 and full_svc=1. |
"sign"
| A sign-language interpretation of an audio track. | Video only. | Ogg: "video/sign". |
"subtitles"
| A version of the main video track with subtitles burnt in. (For legacy content; new content would use text tracks.) | Video only. | DASH: "subtitle" and "main" roles together (other roles ignored). |
"translation"
| A translated version of the main audio track. | Audio only. | Ogg: "audio/dub". DASH: "dub" and "main" roles together (other roles ignored). |
"commentary"
| Commentary on the primary audio or video track, e.g. a director's commentary. | Audio and video. | DASH: "commentary" role without "main" role (other roles ignored). |
" | No explicit kind, or the kind given by the track's metadata is not recognized by the user agent. | Audio and video. |
The AudioTrack.label and VideoTrack.label attributes must return the label
of the track, if it has one, or the empty string otherwise. [INBAND]
The AudioTrack.language and VideoTrack.language attributes must return the
BCP 47 language tag of the language of the track, if it has one, or the empty string otherwise. If
the user agent is not able to express that language as a BCP 47 language tag (for example because
the language information in the media resource's format is a free-form string without
a defined interpretation), then the method must return the empty string, as if the track had no
language. [INBAND]
The AudioTrack.enabled attribute, on
getting, must return true if the track is currently enabled, and false otherwise. On setting, it
must enable the track if the new value is true, and disable it otherwise. (If the track is no
longer in an AudioTrackList object, then the track being enabled or disabled has no
effect beyond changing the value of the attribute on the AudioTrack object.)
Whenever an audio track in an AudioTrackList that was
disabled is enabled, and whenever one that was enabled is disabled, the user agent must
queue a task to fire an event named change at the AudioTrackList object.
An audio track that has no data for a particular position on the media timeline, or that does not exist at that position, must be interpreted as being silent at that point on the timeline.
The VideoTrackList.selectedIndex attribute
must return the index of the currently selected track, if any. If the VideoTrackList
object does not currently represent any tracks, or if none of the tracks are selected, it must
instead return −1.
The VideoTrack.selected attribute, on
getting, must return true if the track is currently selected, and false otherwise. On setting, it
must select the track if the new value is true, and unselect it otherwise. If the track is in a
VideoTrackList, then all the other VideoTrack objects in that list must
be unselected. (If the track is no longer in a VideoTrackList object, then the track
being selected or unselected has no effect beyond changing the value of the attribute on the
VideoTrack object.)
Whenever a track in a VideoTrackList that was previously
not selected is selected, and whenever the selected track in a VideoTrackList is
unselected without a new track being selected in its stead, the user agent must queue a
task to fire an event named change at the VideoTrackList object. This task must be queued before the
task that fires the resize event, if any.
A video track that has no data for a particular position on the media timeline must be interpreted as being fully transparent black at that point on the timeline, with the same dimensions as the last frame before that position, or, if the position is before all the data for that track, the same dimensions as the first frame for that track. A track that does not exist at all at the current position must be treated as if it existed but had no data.
For instance, if a video has a track that is only introduced after one hour of playback, and the user selects that track then goes back to the start, then the user agent will act as if that track started at the start of the media resource but was simply transparent until one hour in.
The following are the event handlers (and their corresponding event handler event types) that must be supported, as event handler IDL attributes,
by all objects implementing the AudioTrackList and VideoTrackList
interfaces:
| Event handler | Event handler event type |
|---|---|
onchange | change
|
onaddtrack | addtrack
|
onremovetrack | removetrack
|
The audioTracks and videoTracks attributes allow scripts to select which track
should play, but it is also possible to select specific tracks declaratively, by specifying
particular tracks in the fragment of the
URL of the media resource. The format of the fragment depends on the MIME type of the
media resource. [RFC2046] [URL]
In this example, a video that uses a format that supports media fragment syntax is embedded in such a way that the alternative angles labeled "Alternative" are enabled instead of the default video track.
<video src="myvideo#track=Alternative"></video>
Spec bugs: 28973
A media element can have a group of associated text tracks, known as the media element's list of text tracks. The text tracks are sorted as follows:
track element
children of the media element, in tree order.addTextTrack() method, in the order they were added, oldest
first.A text track consists of:
This decides how the track is handled by the user agent. The kind is represented by a string. The possible strings are:
subtitles
captions
descriptions
chapters
metadata
The kind of track can change dynamically, in the case of
a text track corresponding to a track element.
This is a human-readable string intended to identify the track for the user.
The label of a track can change dynamically, in the
case of a text track corresponding to a track element.
When a text track label is the empty string, the user agent should automatically generate an appropriate label from the text track's other properties (e.g. the kind of text track and the text track's language) for use in its user interface. This automatically-generated label is not exposed in the API.
This is a string extracted from the media resource specifically for in-band metadata tracks to enable such tracks to be dispatched to different scripts in the document.
For example, a traditional TV station broadcast streamed on the Web and augmented with Web-specific interactive features could include text tracks with metadata for ad targeting, trivia game data during game shows, player states during sports games, recipe information during food programs, and so forth. As each program starts and ends, new tracks might be added or removed from the stream, and as each one is added, the user agent could bind them to dedicated script modules using the value of this attribute.
Other than for in-band metadata text tracks, the in-band metadata track dispatch type is the empty string. How this value is populated for different media formats is described in steps to expose a media-resource-specific text track.
This is a string (a BCP 47 language tag) representing the language of the text track's cues. [BCP47]
The language of a text track can change dynamically,
in the case of a text track corresponding to a track element.
One of the following:
Indicates that the text track's cues have not been obtained.
Indicates that the text track is loading and there have been no fatal errors encountered so far. Further cues might still be added to the track by the parser.
Indicates that the text track has been loaded with no fatal errors.
Indicates that the text track was enabled, but when the user agent attempted to obtain it, this failed in some way (e.g. URL could not be parsed, network error, unknown text track format). Some or all of the cues are likely missing and will not be obtained.
The readiness state of a text track changes dynamically as the track is obtained.
One of the following:
Indicates that the text track is not active. Other than for the purposes of exposing the track in the DOM, the user agent is ignoring the text track. No cues are active, no events are fired, and the user agent will not attempt to obtain the track's cues.
Indicates that the text track is active, but that the user agent is not actively displaying the cues. If no attempt has yet been made to obtain the track's cues, the user agent will perform such an attempt momentarily. The user agent is maintaining a list of which cues are active, and events are being fired accordingly.
Indicates that the text track is active. If no attempt has yet been made to obtain the
track's cues, the user agent will perform such an attempt momentarily. The user agent is
maintaining a list of which cues are active, and events are being fired accordingly. In
addition, for text tracks whose kind is subtitles or captions, the cues are being overlaid on the video
as appropriate; for text tracks whose kind is descriptions, the user agent is making the
cues available to the user in a non-visual fashion; and for text tracks whose kind is chapters, the user agent is making available to
the user a mechanism by which the user can navigate to any point in the media
resource by selecting a cue.
A list of text track cues, along with rules for updating the text track rendering. For example, for WebVTT, the rules for updating the display of WebVTT text tracks. [WEBVTT]
The list of cues of a text track can change dynamically, either because the text track has not yet been loaded or is still loading, or due to DOM manipulation.
Each text track has a corresponding TextTrack object.
Each media element has a list of pending text tracks, which must initially be empty, a blocked-on-parser flag, which must initially be false, and a did-perform-automatic-track-selection flag, which must also initially be false.
When the user agent is required to populate the list of pending text tracks of a media element, the user agent must add to the element's list of pending text tracks each text track in the element's list of text tracks whose text track mode is not disabled and whose text track readiness state is loading.
Whenever a track element's parent node changes, the user agent must remove the
corresponding text track from any list of pending text tracks that it is
in.
Whenever a text track's text track readiness state changes to either loaded or failed to load, the user agent must remove it from any list of pending text tracks that it is in.
When a media element is created by an HTML parser or XML parser, the user agent must set the element's blocked-on-parser flag to true. When a media element is popped off the stack of open elements of an HTML parser or XML parser, the user agent must honor user preferences for automatic text track selection, populate the list of pending text tracks, and set the element's blocked-on-parser flag to false.
The text tracks of a media element are ready when both the element's list of pending text tracks is empty and the element's blocked-on-parser flag is false.
Each media element has a pending text track change notification flag, which must initially be unset.
Whenever a text track that is in a media element's list of text tracks has its text track mode change value, the user agent must run the following steps for the media element:
If the media element's pending text track change notification flag is set, abort these steps.
Set the media element's pending text track change notification flag.
Queue a task to run these steps:
Unset the media element's pending text track change notification flag.
Fire an event named change at the media element's textTracks attribute's TextTrackList
object.
If the media element's show poster flag is not set, run the time marches on steps.
The task source for the tasks listed in this section is the DOM manipulation task source.
A text track cue is the unit of time-sensitive data in a text track, corresponding for instance for subtitles and captions to the text that appears at a particular time and disappears at another time.
Each text track cue consists of:
An arbitrary string.
The time, in seconds and fractions of a second, that describes the beginning of the range of the media data to which the cue applies.
The time, in seconds and fractions of a second, that describes the end of the range of the media data to which the cue applies.
A boolean indicating whether playback of the media resource is to pause when the end of the range to which the cue applies is reached.
Additional fields, as needed for the format, including the actual data of the cue. For example, WebVTT has a text track cue writing direction and so forth. [WEBVTT]
An algorithm which, when applied to the cue, returns a string that can be used in user interfaces that use the cue as a chapter title.
The text track cue start time and text track cue end time can be negative. (The current playback position can never be negative, though, so cues entirely before time zero cannot be active.)
Each text track cue has a corresponding TextTrackCue object (or more
specifically, an object that inherits from TextTrackCue — for example, WebVTT
cues use the VTTCue interface). A text track cue's in-memory
representation can be dynamically changed through this TextTrackCue API. [WEBVTT]
A text track cue is associated with rules for updating the text track
rendering, as defined by the specification for the specific kind of text track
cue. These rules are used specifically when the object representing the cue is added to a
TextTrack object using the addCue()
method.
In addition, each text track cue has two pieces of dynamic information:
This flag must be initially unset. The flag is used to ensure events are fired appropriately when the cue becomes active or inactive, and to make sure the right cues are rendered.
The user agent must synchronously unset this flag whenever the text track cue is
removed from its text track's text track list of cues; whenever the
text track itself is removed from its media element's list of
text tracks or has its text track mode changed to disabled; and whenever the media element's readyState is changed back to HAVE_NOTHING. When the flag is unset in this way for one
or more cues in text tracks that were showing prior to the relevant incident, the user agent must, after having unset
the flag for all the affected cues, apply the rules for updating the text track
rendering of those text tracks. For example, for text tracks based on WebVTT, the rules for updating the display
of WebVTT text tracks. [WEBVTT]
This is used as part of the rendering model, to keep cues in a consistent position. It must initially be empty. Whenever the text track cue active flag is unset, the user agent must empty the text track cue display state.
The text track cues of a media element's text tracks are ordered relative to each other in the text track cue order, which is determined as follows: first group the cues by their text track, with the groups being sorted in the same order as their text tracks appear in the media element's list of text tracks; then, within each group, cues must be sorted by their start time, earliest first; then, any cues with the same start time must be sorted by their end time, latest first; and finally, any cues with identical end times must be sorted in the order they were last added to their respective text track list of cues, oldest first (so e.g. for cues from a WebVTT file, that would initially be the order in which the cues were listed in the file). [WEBVTT]
A media-resource-specific text track is a text track that corresponds to data found in the media resource.
Rules for processing and rendering such data are defined by the relevant specifications, e.g. the specification of the video format if the media resource is a video. Details for some legacy formats can be found in the Sourcing In-band Media Resource Tracks from Media Containers into HTML specification. [INBAND]
When a media resource contains data that the user agent recognizes and supports as being equivalent to a text track, the user agent runs the steps to expose a media-resource-specific text track with the relevant data, as follows.
Associate the relevant data with a new text track and its corresponding new
TextTrack object. The text track is a media-resource-specific
text track.
Set the new text track's kind, label, and language based on the semantics of the relevant data, as defined by the relevant specification. If there is no label in that data, then the label must be set to the empty string.
Associate the text track list of cues with the rules for updating the text track rendering appropriate for the format in question.
If the new text track's kind is metadata, then set the text track in-band
metadata track dispatch type as follows, based on the type of the media
resource:
CodecID element. [WEBMCG]stsd box of the
first stbl box of the
first minf box of the
first mdia box of the
text track's trak box in the
first moov box
of the file be the stsd box, if any.
If the file has no stsd box, or if the stsd box has neither a mett box nor a metx box, then the text track
in-band metadata track dispatch type must be set to the empty string.
Otherwise, if the stsd box has a mett box then the text
track in-band metadata track dispatch type must be set to the concatenation of the
string "mett", a U+0020 SPACE character, and the value of the first mime_format field of the first mett box of the stsd
box, or the empty string if that field is absent in that box.
Otherwise, if the stsd box has no mett box but has a metx box then the text track in-band metadata track dispatch type
must be set to the concatenation of the string "metx", a U+0020 SPACE
character, and the value of the first namespace field of the first metx box of the stsd box, or the empty string if that field is absent in
that box.
[MPEG4]
Populate the new text track's list of cues with the cues parsed so far, following the guidelines for exposing cues, and begin updating it dynamically as necessary.
Set the new text track's readiness state to loaded.
Set the new text track's mode to the mode consistent with the user's preferences and the requirements of the relevant specification for the data.
For instance, if there are no other active subtitles, and this is a forced subtitle track (a subtitle track giving subtitles in the audio track's primary language, but only for audio that is actually in another language), then those subtitles might be activated here.
Add the new text track to the media element's list of text tracks.
Fire an event named addtrack at the media element's textTracks attribute's TextTrackList object,
using TrackEvent, with the track
attribute initialized to the text track's TextTrack object.
When a track element is created, it must be associated with a new text
track (with its value set as defined below) and its corresponding new
TextTrack object.
The text track kind is determined from the state of the element's kind attribute according to the following table; for a state given
in a cell of the first column, the kind is the string given
in the second column:
| State | String |
|---|---|
| Subtitles | subtitles
|
| Captions | captions
|
| Descriptions | descriptions
|
| Chapters | chapters
|
| Metadata | metadata
|
The text track label is the element's track label.
The text track language is the element's track language, if any, or the empty string otherwise.
As the kind, label,
and srclang attributes are set, changed, or removed, the
text track must update accordingly, as per the definitions above.
Changes to the track URL are handled in the algorithm below.
The text track readiness state is initially not loaded, and the text track mode is initially disabled.
The text track list of cues is initially empty. It is dynamically modified when the referenced file is parsed. Associated with the list are the rules for updating the text track rendering appropriate for the format in question; for WebVTT, this is the rules for updating the display of WebVTT text tracks. [WEBVTT]
When a track element's parent element changes and the new parent is a media
element, then the user agent must add the track element's corresponding
text track to the media element's list of text tracks, and
then queue a task to fire an event named
addtrack at the media element's textTracks attribute's TextTrackList object,
using TrackEvent, with the track attribute
initialized to the text track's TextTrack object.
When a track element's parent element changes and the old parent was a media
element, then the user agent must remove the track element's corresponding
text track from the media element's list of text tracks,
and then queue a task to fire an event named
removetrack at the media element's
textTracks attribute's TextTrackList
object, using TrackEvent, with the track
attribute initialized to the text track's TextTrack object.
When a text track corresponding to a track element is added to a
media element's list of text tracks, the user agent must queue a
task to run the following steps for the media element:
If the element's blocked-on-parser flag is true, abort these steps.
If the element's did-perform-automatic-track-selection flag is true, abort these steps.
Honor user preferences for automatic text track selection for this element.
When the user agent is required to honor user preferences for automatic text track selection for a media element, the user agent must run the following steps:
Perform automatic text track selection for subtitles and captions.
If there are any text tracks in the media
element's list of text tracks whose text track kind is metadata that correspond to track
elements with a default attribute set whose text
track mode is set to disabled, then set the
text track mode of all such tracks to
Set the element's did-perform-automatic-track-selection flag to true.
When the steps above say to perform automatic text track selection for one or more text track kinds, it means to run the following steps:
Let candidates be a list consisting of the text tracks in the media element's list of text tracks whose text track kind is one of the kinds that were passed to the algorithm, if any, in the order given in the list of text tracks.
If candidates is empty, then abort these steps.
If any of the text tracks in candidates have a text track mode set to showing, abort these steps.
If the user has expressed an interest in having a track from candidates enabled based on its text track kind, text track language, and text track label, then set its text track mode to showing.
For example, the user could have set a browser preference to the effect of "I want French captions whenever possible", or "If there is a subtitle track with 'Commentary' in the title, enable it", or "If there are audio description tracks available, enable one, ideally in Swiss German, but failing that in Standard Swiss German or Standard German".
Otherwise, if there are any text tracks in candidates that correspond to track elements with a default attribute set whose text track mode is
set to disabled, then set the text track
mode of the first such track to showing.
When a text track corresponding to a track element experiences any of
the following circumstances, the user agent must start the track processing
model for that text track and its track element:
track element is created.track element's parent element changes and the new parent is a media
element.When a user agent is to start the track processing model for a
text track and its track element, it must run the following algorithm.
This algorithm interacts closely with the event loop mechanism; in particular, it has
a synchronous section (which is triggered as part of the event loop
algorithm). The steps in that section are marked with ⌛.
If another occurrence of this algorithm is already running for this text
track and its track element, abort these steps, letting that other algorithm
take care of this element.
If the text track's text track mode is not set to one of or showing, abort these steps.
If the text track's track element does not have a media
element as a parent, abort these steps.
Run the remainder of these steps in parallel, allowing whatever caused these steps to run to continue.
Top: Await a stable state. The synchronous section consists of the following steps. (The steps in the synchronous section are marked with ⌛.)
⌛ Set the text track readiness state to loading.
⌛ If the track element's parent is a media element then
let corsAttributeState be the state of the parent media element's crossorigin content attribute. Otherwise, let
corsAttributeState be No CORS.
End the synchronous section, continuing the remaining steps in parallel.
If URL is not the empty string, then:
Let request be the result of creating a potential-CORS request given
URL, "media", and corsAttributeState, and with the
same-origin fallback flag set.
Set request's client to the
track element's node document's Window object's
environment settings object and type to
"track".
Fetch request.
The tasks queued by the fetching algorithm on the networking task source to process the data as it is being fetched must determine the type of the resource. If the type of the resource is not a supported text track format, the load will fail, as described below. Otherwise, the resource's data must be passed to the appropriate parser (e.g., the WebVTT parser) as it is received, with the text track list of cues being used for that parser's output. [WEBVTT]
The appropriate parser will incrementally update the text track list of cues during these networking task source tasks, as each such task is run with whatever data has been received from the network).
This specification does not currently say whether or how to check the MIME types of text tracks, or whether or how to perform file type sniffing using the actual file data. Implementors differ in their intentions on this matter and it is therefore unclear what the right solution is. In the absence of any requirement here, the HTTP specification's strict requirement to follow the Content-Type header prevails ("Content-Type specifies the media type of the underlying data." ... "If and only if the media type is not given by a Content-Type field, the recipient MAY attempt to guess the media type via inspection of its content and/or the name extension(s) of the URI used to identify the resource.").
If fetching fails for any reason (network error, the server returns an error code, CORS
fails, etc), or if URL is the empty string, then queue a task to first
change the text track readiness state to failed to load and then fire an event
named error at the track element. This
task must use the DOM manipulation task
source.
If fetching does not fail, but the type of the resource is not a supported
text track format, or the file was not successfully processed (e.g., the format in question is
an XML format and the file contained a well-formedness error that the XML specification requires
be detected and reported to the application), then the task
that is queued by the networking task source in
which the aforementioned problem is found must change the text track readiness
state to failed to load and fire an event named error at the track element.
If fetching does not fail, and the file was successfully processed, then the final task that is queued by the
networking task source, after it has finished parsing the data, must change the
text track readiness state to loaded, and
fire an event named load at the track element.
If, while fetching is ongoing, either:
...then the user agent must abort fetching, discarding
any pending tasks generated by that algorithm (and
in particular, not adding any cues to the text track list of cues after the moment
the URL changed), and then queue a task that first changes the text track
readiness state to failed to load and
then fires an event named error at the track element. This task must use the DOM manipulation task source.
Wait until the text track readiness state is no longer set to loading.
Wait until the track URL is no longer equal to URL, at the same time as the text track mode is set to or showing.
Jump to the step labeled top.
Whenever a track element has its src attribute
set, changed, or removed, the user agent must immediately empty the element's text
track's text track list of cues. (This also causes the algorithm above to stop
adding cues from the resource being obtained using the previously given URL, if any.)
How a specific format's text track cues are to be interpreted for the purposes of processing by an HTML user agent is defined by that format. In the absence of such a specification, this section provides some constraints within which implementations can attempt to consistently expose such formats.
To support the text track model of HTML, each unit of timed data is converted to a text track cue. Where the mapping of the format's features to the aspects of a text track cue as defined in this specification are not defined, implementations must ensure that the mapping is consistent with the definitions of the aspects of a text track cue as defined above, as well as with the following constraints:
Should be set to the empty string if the format has no obvious analogue to a per-cue identifier.
Should be set to false.
interface TextTrackList : EventTarget {
readonly attribute unsigned long length;
getter TextTrack (unsigned long index);
TextTrack? getTrackById(DOMString id);
attribute EventHandler onchange;
attribute EventHandler onaddtrack;
attribute EventHandler onremovetrack;
};
textTracks . lengthReturns the number of text tracks associated with the media element (e.g. from track elements). This is the number of text tracks in the media element's list of text tracks.
textTracks[ n ]Returns the TextTrack object representing the nth text track in the media element's list of text tracks.
textTracks . getTrackById( id )Returns the TextTrack object with the given identifier, or null if no track has that identifier.
A TextTrackList object represents a dynamically updating list of text tracks in a given order.
The textTracks attribute of media elements must return a TextTrackList object
representing the TextTrack objects of the text tracks
in the media element's list of text tracks, in the same order as in the
list of text tracks.
The length attribute of a
TextTrackList object must return the number of text
tracks in the list represented by the TextTrackList object.
The supported property indices of a TextTrackList object at any
instant are the numbers from zero to the number of text tracks in
the list represented by the TextTrackList object minus one, if any. If there are no
text tracks in the list, there are no supported property
indices.
To determine the value of an indexed property of a
TextTrackList object for a given index index, the user agent must return
the indexth text track in the list represented by the
TextTrackList object.
The getTrackById(id) method must return the first TextTrack in the
TextTrackList object whose id IDL attribute
would return a value equal to the value of the id argument. When no tracks
match the given argument, the method must return null.
enum TextTrackMode { "disabled", "hidden", "showing" };
enum TextTrackKind { "subtitles", "captions", "descriptions", "chapters", "metadata" };
interface TextTrack : EventTarget {
readonly attribute TextTrackKind kind;
readonly attribute DOMString label;
readonly attribute DOMString language;
readonly attribute DOMString id;
readonly attribute DOMString inBandMetadataTrackDispatchType;
attribute TextTrackMode mode;
readonly attribute TextTrackCueList? cues;
readonly attribute TextTrackCueList? activeCues;
void addCue(TextTrackCue cue);
void removeCue(TextTrackCue cue);
attribute EventHandler oncuechange;
};
addTextTrack( kind [, label [, language ] ] )Creates and returns a new TextTrack object, which is also added to the
media element's list of text tracks.
kindReturns the text track kind string.
labelReturns the text track label, if there is one, or the empty string otherwise (indicating that a custom label probably needs to be generated from the other attributes of the object if the object is exposed to the user).
languageReturns the text track language string.
idReturns the ID of the given track.
For in-band tracks, this is the ID that can be used with a fragment if the format supports media fragment
syntax, and that can be used with the getTrackById() method.
For TextTrack objects corresponding to track elements, this is the
ID of the track element.
inBandMetadataTrackDispatchTypeReturns the text track in-band metadata track dispatch type string.
mode [ = value ]Returns the text track mode, represented by a string from the following list:
disabled"The text track disabled mode.
The mode.
showing"The text track showing mode.
Can be set, to change the mode.
cuesReturns the text track list of cues, as a TextTrackCueList object.
activeCuesReturns the text track cues from the text track
list of cues that are currently active (i.e. that start before the current playback
position and end after it), as a TextTrackCueList object.
addCue( cue )Adds the given cue to textTrack's text track list of cues.
removeCue( cue )Removes the given cue from textTrack's text track list of cues.
The addTextTrack(kind, label, language) method of media elements, when invoked, must run the following steps:
Create a new TextTrack object.
Create a new text track corresponding to the new object, and set its text track kind to kind, its text track label to label, its text track language to language, its text track readiness state to the text track loaded state, its text track mode to the mode, and its text track list of cues to an empty list.
Initially, the text track list of cues is not associated with any rules for updating the text track rendering. When a text track cue is added to it, the text track list of cues has its rules permanently set accordingly.
Add the new text track to the media element's list of text tracks.
Queue a task to fire an event named
addtrack at the media element's textTracks attribute's TextTrackList object,
using TrackEvent, with the track
attribute initialized to the new text track's TextTrack object.
Return the new TextTrack object.
The kind attribute must return the
text track kind of the text track that the TextTrack object
represents.
The label attribute must return the
text track label of the text track that the TextTrack
object represents.
The language attribute must return the
text track language of the text track that the TextTrack
object represents.
The id attribute returns the track's
identifier, if it has one, or the empty string otherwise. For tracks that correspond to
track elements, the track's identifier is the value of the element's id attribute, if any. For in-band tracks, the track's identifier is
specified by the media resource. If the media resource is in a format
that supports media fragment syntax, the identifier returned for a particular
track must be the same identifier that would enable the track if used as the name of a track in
the track dimension of such a fragment.
The inBandMetadataTrackDispatchType
attribute must return the text track in-band metadata track dispatch type of the
text track that the TextTrack object represents.
The mode attribute, on getting, must return
the string corresponding to the text track mode of the text track that
the TextTrack object represents, as defined by the following list:
disabled"hidden"showing"On setting, if the new value isn't equal to what the attribute would currently return, the new value must be processed as follows:
disabled"Set the text track mode of the text track that the
TextTrack object represents to the text track disabled mode.
Set the text track mode of the text track that the
TextTrack object represents to the mode.
showing"Set the text track mode of the text track that the
TextTrack object represents to the text track showing mode.
If the text track mode of the text track that the
TextTrack object represents is not the text track disabled mode, then
the cues attribute must return a
live TextTrackCueList object that represents the subset of the
text track list of cues of the text track that the
TextTrack object represents whose end
times occur at or after the earliest possible position when the script
started, in text track cue order. Otherwise, it must return null. For each TextTrack object, when an
object is returned, the same TextTrackCueList object must be returned each time.
The earliest possible position when the script started is whatever the earliest possible position was the last time the event loop reached step 1.
If the text track mode of the text track that the
TextTrack object represents is not the text track disabled mode, then
the activeCues attribute must return a
live TextTrackCueList object that represents the subset of the
text track list of cues of the text track that the
TextTrack object represents whose active flag was set when the script
started, in text track cue order. Otherwise, it must return null. For each TextTrack object, when an
object is returned, the same TextTrackCueList object must be returned each time.
A text track cue's active flag was set when the script started if its text track cue active flag was set the last time the event loop reached step 1.
The addCue(cue) method
of TextTrack objects, when invoked, must run the following steps:
If the text track list of cues does not yet have any associated rules for updating the text track rendering, then associate the text track list of cues with the rules for updating the text track rendering appropriate to cue.
If text track list of cues' associated rules for updating the text
track rendering are not the same rules for updating the text track rendering
as appropriate for cue, then throw an "InvalidStateError"
DOMException and abort these steps.
If the given cue is in a text track list of cues, then remove cue from that text track list of cues.
Add cue to the method's TextTrack object's text
track's text track list of cues.
The removeCue(cue)
method of TextTrack objects, when invoked, must run the following steps:
If the given cue is not currently listed in the method's
TextTrack object's text track's text track list of cues,
then throw a "NotFoundError" DOMException and abort these
steps.
Remove cue from the method's TextTrack object's
text track's text track list of cues.
In this example, an audio element is used to play a specific sound-effect from a
sound file containing many sound effects. A cue is used to pause the audio, so that it ends
exactly at the end of the clip, even if the browser is busy running some script. If the page had
relied on script to pause the audio, then the start of the next clip might be heard if the
browser was not able to run the script at the exact time specified.
var sfx = new Audio('sfx.wav');
var sounds = sfx.addTextTrack('metadata');
// add sounds we care about
function addFX(start, end, name) {
var cue = new VTTCue(start, end, '');
cue.id = name;
cue.pauseOnExit = true;
sounds.addCue(cue);
}
addFX(12.783, 13.612, 'dog bark');
addFX(13.612, 15.091, 'kitten mew'))
function playSound(id) {
sfx.currentTime = sounds.getCueById(id).startTime;
sfx.play();
}
// play a bark as soon as we can
sfx.oncanplaythrough = function () {
playSound('dog bark');
}
// meow when the user tries to leave,
// and have the browser ask them to stay
window.onbeforeunload = function (e) {
playSound('kitten mew');
e.preventDefault();
}
interface TextTrackCueList {
readonly attribute unsigned long length;
getter TextTrackCue (unsigned long index);
TextTrackCue? getCueById(DOMString id);
};
lengthReturns the number of cues in the list.
Returns the text track cue with index index in the list. The cues are sorted in text track cue order.
getCueById( id )Returns the first text track cue (in text track cue order) with text track cue identifier id.
Returns null if none of the cues have the given identifier or if the argument is the empty string.
A TextTrackCueList object represents a dynamically updating list of text track cues in a given order.
The length attribute must return
the number of cues in the list represented by the
TextTrackCueList object.
The supported property indices of a TextTrackCueList object at any
instant are the numbers from zero to the number of cues in the
list represented by the TextTrackCueList object minus one, if any. If there are no
cues in the list, there are no supported property
indices.
To determine the value of an indexed property for a
given index index, the user agent must return the indexth text track
cue in the list represented by the TextTrackCueList object.
The getCueById(id) method, when called with an argument other than the empty string,
must return the first text track cue in the list represented by the
TextTrackCueList object whose text track cue identifier is id, if any, or null otherwise. If the argument is the empty string, then the method
must return null.
interface TextTrackCue : EventTarget {
readonly attribute TextTrack? track;
attribute DOMString id;
attribute double startTime;
attribute double endTime;
attribute boolean pauseOnExit;
attribute EventHandler onenter;
attribute EventHandler onexit;
};
Returns the TextTrack object to which this
text track cue belongs, if any, or null
otherwise.
Returns the text track cue identifier.
Can be set.
Returns the text track cue start time, in seconds.
Can be set.
Returns the text track cue end time, in seconds.
Can be set.
Returns true if the text track cue pause-on-exit flag is set, false otherwise.
Can be set.
The track attribute, on getting, must
return the TextTrack object of the text track in whose list of cues the text track cue that the
TextTrackCue object represents finds itself, if any; or null otherwise.
The id attribute, on getting, must return
the text track cue identifier of the text track cue that the
TextTrackCue object represents. On setting, the text track cue
identifier must be set to the new value.
The startTime attribute, on
getting, must return the text track cue start time of the text track cue
that the TextTrackCue object represents, in seconds. On setting, the text track
cue start time must be set to the new value, interpreted in seconds; then, if the
TextTrackCue object's text track cue is in a text track's
list of cues, and that text track is in
a media element's list of text tracks, and the media
element's show poster flag is not set, then run the time marches on steps for that media element.
The endTime attribute, on getting,
must return the text track cue end time of the text track cue that the
TextTrackCue object represents, in seconds. On setting, the text track cue end
time must be set to the new value, interpreted in seconds; then, if the
TextTrackCue object's text track cue is in a text track's
list of cues, and that text track is in
a media element's list of text tracks, and the media
element's show poster flag is not set, then run the time marches on steps for that media element.
The pauseOnExit attribute, on
getting, must return true if the text track cue pause-on-exit flag of the text
track cue that the TextTrackCue object represents is set; or false otherwise.
On setting, the text track cue pause-on-exit flag must be set if the new value is
true, and must be unset otherwise.
Chapters are segments of a media resource with a given title. Chapters can be nested, in the same way that sections in a document outline can have subsections.
Each text track cue in a text track being used for describing chapters has three key features: the text track cue start time, giving the start time of the chapter, the text track cue end time, giving the end time of the chapter, and the text track rules for extracting the chapter title.
The rules for constructing the chapter tree from a text track are as follows. They produce a potentially nested list of chapters, each of which have a start time, end time, title, and a list of nested chapters. This algorithm discards cues that do not correctly nest within each other, or that are out of order.
Let list be a copy of the list of cues of the text track being processed.
Remove from list any text track cue whose text track cue end time is before its text track cue start time.
Let output be an empty list of chapters, where a chapter is a record consisting of a start time, an end time, a title, and a (potentially empty) list of nested chapters. For the purpose of this algorithm, each chapter also has a parent chapter.
Let current chapter be a stand-in chapter whose start time is negative infinity, whose end time is positive infinity, and whose list of nested chapters is output. (This is just used to make the algorithm easier to describe.)
Loop: If list is empty, jump to the step labeled end.
Let current cue be the first cue in list, and then remove it from list.
If current cue's text track cue start time is less than the start time of current chapter, then return to the step labeled loop.
While current cue's text track cue start time is greater than or equal to current chapter's end time, let current chapter be current chapter's parent chapter.
If current cue's text track cue end time is greater than the end time of current chapter, then return to the step labeled loop.
Create a new chapter new chapter, whose start time is current cue's text track cue start time, whose end time is current cue's text track cue end time, whose title is the result of running current cue's text track rules for extracting the chapter title, and whose list of nested chapters is empty.
Append new chapter to current chapter's list of nested chapters, and let current chapter be new chapter's parent.
Let current chapter be new chapter.
Return to the step labeled loop.
End: Return output.
The following snippet of a WebVTT file shows how nested chapters can be marked up. The file describes three 50-minute chapters, "Astrophysics", "Computational Physics", and "General Relativity". The first has three subchapters, the second has four, and the third has two. [WEBVTT]
WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:50:00.000 Astrophysics 00:00:00.000 --> 00:10:00.000 Introduction to Astrophysics 00:10:00.000 --> 00:45:00.000 The Solar System 00:00:00.000 --> 00:10:00.000 Coursework Description 00:50:00.000 --> 01:40:00.000 Computational Physics 00:50:00.000 --> 00:55:00.000 Introduction to Programming 00:55:00.000 --> 01:30:00.000 Data Structures 01:30:00.000 --> 01:35:00.000 Answers to Last Exam 01:35:00.000 --> 01:40:00.000 Coursework Description 01:40:00.000 --> 02:30:00.000 General Relativity 01:40:00.000 --> 02:00:00.000 Tensor Algebra 02:00:00.000 --> 02:30:00.000 The General Relativistic Field Equations
The following are the event handlers that (and their corresponding event handler event types) must be supported, as event handler IDL
attributes, by all objects implementing the TextTrackList interface:
| Event handler | Event handler event type |
|---|---|
onchange | change
|
onaddtrack | addtrack
|
onremovetrack | removetrack
|
The following are the event handlers that (and their corresponding event handler event types) must be supported, as event handler IDL
attributes, by all objects implementing the TextTrack interface:
| Event handler | Event handler event type |
|---|---|
oncuechange | cuechange
|
The following are the event handlers that (and their corresponding event handler event types) must be supported, as event handler IDL
attributes, by all objects implementing the TextTrackCue interface:
| Event handler | Event handler event type |
|---|---|
onenter | enter
|
onexit | exit
|
This section is non-normative.
Text tracks can be used for storing data relating to the media data, for interactive or augmented views.
For example, a page showing a sports broadcast could include information about the current score. Suppose a robotics competition was being streamed live. The image could be overlayed with the scores, as follows:
In order to make the score display render correctly whenever the user seeks to an arbitrary point in the video, the metadata text track cues need to be as long as is appropriate for the score. For example, in the frame above, there would be maybe one cue that lasts the length of the match that gives the match number, one cue that lasts until the blue alliance's score changes, and one cue that lasts until the red alliance's score changes. If the video is just a stream of the live event, the time in the bottom right would presumably be automatically derived from the current video time, rather than based on a cue. However, if the video was just the highlights, then that might be given in cues also.
The following shows what fragments of this could look like in a WebVTT file:
WEBVTT ... 05:10:00.000 --> 05:12:15.000 matchtype:qual matchnumber:37 ... 05:11:02.251 --> 05:11:17.198 red:78 05:11:03.672 --> 05:11:54.198 blue:66 05:11:17.198 --> 05:11:25.912 red:80 05:11:25.912 --> 05:11:26.522 red:83 05:11:26.522 --> 05:11:26.982 red:86 05:11:26.982 --> 05:11:27.499 red:89 ...
The key here is to notice that the information is given in cues that span the length of time to which the relevant event applies. If, instead, the scores were given as zero-length (or very brief, nearly zero-length) cues when the score changes, for example saying "red+2" at 05:11:17.198, "red+3" at 05:11:25.912, etc, problems arise: primarily, seeking is much harder to implement, as the script has to walk the entire list of cues to make sure that no notifications have been missed; but also, if the cues are short it's possible the script will never see that they are active unless it listens to them specifically.
When using cues in this manner, authors are encouraged to use the cuechange event to update the current annotations. (In
particular, using the timeupdate event would be less
appropriate as it would require doing work even when the cues haven't changed, and, more
importantly, would introduce a higher latency between when the metadata cues become active and
when the display is updated, since timeupdate events
are rate-limited.)
Other specifications or formats that need a URL to identify the return values of
the AudioTrack.kind or VideoTrack.kind IDL attributes, or identify the kind of text track, must use the about:html-kind
URL.
The controls attribute is a boolean
attribute. If present, it indicates that the author has not provided a scripted controller
and would like the user agent to provide its own set of controls.
If the attribute is present, or if scripting is disabled for the media element, then the user agent should expose a user interface to the user. This user interface should include features to begin playback, pause playback, seek to an arbitrary position in the content (if the content supports arbitrary seeking), change the volume, change the display of closed captions or embedded sign-language tracks, select different audio tracks or turn on audio descriptions, and show the media content in manners more suitable to the user (e.g. fullscreen video or in an independent resizable window). Other controls may also be made available.
Even when the attribute is absent, however, user agents may provide controls to affect playback
of the media resource (e.g. play, pause, seeking, track selection, and volume controls), but such
features should not interfere with the page's normal rendering. For example, such features could
be exposed in the media element's context menu, platform media keys, or a remote
control. The user agent may implement this simply by exposing a user interface to the user as described above (as if the controls attribute was present).
If the user agent exposes a user interface to
the user by displaying controls over the media element, then the user agent
should suppress any user interaction events while the user agent is interacting with this
interface. (For example, if the user clicks on a video's playback control, mousedown events and so forth would not simultaneously be fired at
elements on the page.)
Where possible (specifically, for starting, stopping, pausing, and unpausing playback, for seeking, for changing the rate of playback, for fast-forwarding or rewinding, for listing, enabling, and disabling text tracks, and for muting or changing the volume of the audio), user interface features exposed by the user agent must be implemented in terms of the DOM API described above, so that, e.g., all the same events fire.
Features such as fast-forward or rewind must be implemented by only changing the playbackRate attribute (and not the defaultPlaybackRate
attribute).
Seeking must be implemented in terms of seeking to the requested position in the media element's media timeline. For media resources where seeking to an arbitrary position would be slow, user agents are encouraged to use the approximate-for-speed flag when seeking in response to the user manipulating an approximate position interface such as a seek bar.
For the purposes of listing chapters in the media resource, only text tracks in the media element's list of text tracks
that are showing and whose text track kind is
chapters should be used. Such tracks must be
interpreted according to the rules for constructing the chapter tree from a text
track. When seeking in response to a user manipulating a chapter selection interface, user
agents should not use the approximate-for-speed flag.
The controls IDL attribute must
reflect the content attribute of the same name.
volume [ = value ]Returns the current playback volume, as a number in the range 0.0 to 1.0, where 0.0 is the quietest and 1.0 the loudest.
Can be set, to change the volume.
Throws an "IndexSizeError" DOMException if the new
value is not in the range 0.0 .. 1.0.
muted [ = value ]Returns true if audio is muted, overriding the volume
attribute, and false if the volume attribute is being
honored.
Can be set, to change whether the audio is muted or not.
A media element has a playback volume, which is a fraction in the range 0.0 (silent) to 1.0 (loudest). Initially, the volume should be 1.0, but user agents may remember the last set value across sessions, on a per-site basis or otherwise, so the volume may start at other values.
The volume IDL attribute must return the
playback volume of any audio portions of the
media element. On setting, if the new value is in the range 0.0 to 1.0 inclusive, the
media element's playback volume must be
set to the new value. If the new value is outside the range 0.0 to 1.0 inclusive, then, on
setting, an "IndexSizeError" DOMException must be thrown
instead.
A media element can also be muted. If anything is muting the element, then it is muted. (For example, when the direction of playback is backwards, the element is muted.)
The muted IDL attribute must return the value
to which it was last set. When a media element is created, if the element has a muted content attribute specified, then the muted IDL attribute should be set to true; otherwise, the user
agents may set the value to the user's preferred value (e.g. remembering the last set value across
sessions, on a per-site basis or otherwise). While the muted
IDL attribute is set to true, the media element must be muted.
Whenever either of the values that would be returned by the volume and muted IDL
attributes change, the user agent must queue a task to fire an event named volumechange at the media element. Then, if
the media element is not allowed to play, the user agent must run the
internal pause steps for the media element.
An element's effective media volume is determined as follows:
If the user has indicated that the user agent is to override the volume of the element, then the element's effective media volume is the volume desired by the user. Abort these steps.
If the element's audio output is muted, the element's effective media volume is zero. Abort these steps.
Let volume be the playback volume of the audio portions of the media element, in range 0.0 (silent) to 1.0 (loudest).
The element's effective media volume is volume, interpreted relative to the range 0.0 to 1.0, with 0.0 being silent, and 1.0 being the loudest setting, values in between increasing in loudness. The range need not be linear. The loudest setting may be lower than the system's loudest possible setting; for example the user could have set a maximum volume.
The muted content attribute on media elements is a boolean attribute that controls the
default state of the audio output of the media resource, potentially overriding user
preferences.
The defaultMuted IDL attribute must
reflect the muted content attribute.
This attribute has no dynamic effect (it only controls the default state of the element).
This video (an advertisement) autoplays, but to avoid annoying users, it does so without sound, and allows the user to turn the sound on. The user agent can pause the video if it's unmuted without a user interaction.
<video src="adverts.cgi?kind=video" controls autoplay loop muted></video>
Objects implementing the TimeRanges interface
represent a list of ranges (periods) of time.
interface TimeRanges {
readonly attribute unsigned long length;
double start(unsigned long index);
double end(unsigned long index);
};
lengthReturns the number of ranges in the object.
start(index)Returns the time for the start of the range with the given index.
Throws an "IndexSizeError" DOMException if the index
is out of range.
end(index)Returns the time for the end of the range with the given index.
Throws an "IndexSizeError" DOMException if the index
is out of range.
The length IDL attribute must return the
number of ranges represented by the object.
The start(index)
method must return the position of the start of the indexth range represented
by the object, in seconds measured from the start of the timeline that the object covers.
The end(index) method
must return the position of the end of the indexth range represented by the
object, in seconds measured from the start of the timeline that the object covers.
These methods must throw "IndexSizeError" DOMExceptions
if called with an index argument greater than or equal to the number of ranges
represented by the object.
When a TimeRanges object is said to be a
normalized TimeRanges
object, the ranges it represents must obey the following criteria:
In other words, the ranges in such an object are ordered, don't overlap, and don't touch (adjacent ranges are folded into one bigger range). A range can be empty (referencing just a single moment in time), e.g. to indicate that only one frame is currently buffered in the case that the user agent has discarded the entire media resource except for the current frame, when a media element is paused.
Ranges in a TimeRanges object must be inclusive.
Thus, the end of a range would be equal to the start of a following adjacent (touching but not overlapping) range. Similarly, a range covering a whole timeline anchored at zero would have a start equal to zero and an end equal to the duration of the timeline.
The timelines used by the objects returned by the buffered, seekable and
played IDL attributes of media
elements must be that element's media timeline.
TrackEvent interface[Constructor(DOMString type, optional TrackEventInit eventInitDict)]
interface TrackEvent : Event {
readonly attribute (VideoTrack or AudioTrack or TextTrack)? track;
};
dictionary TrackEventInit : EventInit {
(VideoTrack or AudioTrack or TextTrack)? track = null;
};
trackReturns the track object (TextTrack, AudioTrack, or
VideoTrack) to which the event relates.
The track attribute must return the value
it was initialized to. It represents the context information for the event.
This section is non-normative.
The following events fire on media elements as part of the processing model described above:
| Event name | Interface | Fired when... | Preconditions |
|---|---|---|---|
loadstart
| Event
| The user agent begins looking for media data, as part of the resource selection algorithm. | networkState equals NETWORK_LOADING
|
progress
| Event
| The user agent is fetching media data. | networkState equals NETWORK_LOADING
|
suspend
| Event
| The user agent is intentionally not currently fetching media data. | networkState equals NETWORK_IDLE
|
abort
| Event
| The user agent stops fetching the media data before it is completely downloaded, but not due to an error. | error is an object with the code MEDIA_ERR_ABORTED. networkState equals either NETWORK_EMPTY or NETWORK_IDLE, depending on when the download was aborted.
|
error
| Event
| An error occurs while fetching the media data or the type of the resource is not supported media format. | error is an object with the code MEDIA_ERR_NETWORK or higher. networkState equals either NETWORK_EMPTY or NETWORK_IDLE, depending on when the download was aborted.
|
emptied
| Event
| A media element whose networkState
was previously not in the NETWORK_EMPTY state has
just switched to that state (either because of a fatal error during load that's about to be
reported, or because the load() method was invoked while
the resource selection algorithm was already
running).
| networkState is NETWORK_EMPTY; all the IDL attributes are in their
initial states.
|
stalled
| Event
| The user agent is trying to fetch media data, but data is unexpectedly not forthcoming. | networkState is NETWORK_LOADING.
|
loadedmetadata
| Event
| The user agent has just determined the duration and dimensions of the media resource and the text tracks are ready. | readyState is newly equal to HAVE_METADATA or greater for the first time.
|
loadeddata
| Event
| The user agent can render the media data at the current playback position for the first time. | readyState newly increased to HAVE_CURRENT_DATA or greater for the first time.
|
canplay
| Event
| The user agent can resume playback of the media data, but estimates that if playback were to be started now, the media resource could not be rendered at the current playback rate up to its end without having to stop for further buffering of content. | readyState newly increased to HAVE_FUTURE_DATA or greater.
|
canplaythrough
| Event
| The user agent estimates that if playback were to be started now, the media resource could be rendered at the current playback rate all the way to its end without having to stop for further buffering. | readyState is newly equal to HAVE_ENOUGH_DATA.
|
playing
| Event
| Playback is ready to start after having been paused or delayed due to lack of media data. | readyState is newly equal to or greater than
HAVE_FUTURE_DATA and paused is false, or paused is newly false and readyState is equal to or greater than HAVE_FUTURE_DATA. Even if this event fires, the
element might still not be potentially playing, e.g. if the element is
paused for user interaction or paused for in-band content.
|
waiting
| Event
| Playback has stopped because the next frame is not available, but the user agent expects that frame to become available in due course. | readyState is equal to or less than HAVE_CURRENT_DATA, and paused is false. Either seeking is true, or the current playback position
is not contained in any of the ranges in buffered. It
is possible for playback to stop for other reasons without paused being false, but those reasons do not fire this event
(and when those situations resolve, a separate playing
event is not fired either): e.g., playback has ended, or
playback stopped due to errors, or the element has paused for user
interaction or paused for in-band content.
|
seeking
| Event
| The seeking IDL attribute changed to true, and the user agent has started seeking to a new position.
| |
seeked
| Event
| The seeking IDL attribute changed to false after the current playback position was changed.
| |
ended
| Event
| Playback has stopped because the end of the media resource was reached. | currentTime equals the end of the media
resource; ended is true.
|
durationchange
| Event
| The duration attribute has just been updated.
| |
timeupdate
| Event
| The current playback position changed as part of normal playback or in an especially interesting way, for example discontinuously. | |
play
| Event
| The element is no longer paused. Fired after the play()
method has returned, or when the autoplay attribute
has caused playback to begin.
| paused is newly false.
|
pause
| Event
| The element has been paused. Fired after the pause()
method has returned.
| paused is newly true.
|
ratechange
| Event
| Either the defaultPlaybackRate or the
playbackRate attribute has just been updated.
| |
resize
| Event
| One or both of the videoWidth and videoHeight attributes have just been updated.
| Media element is a video element; readyState is not HAVE_NOTHING
|
volumechange
| Event
| Either the volume attribute or the muted attribute has changed. Fired after the relevant
attribute's setter has returned.
|
The following event fires on source element:
| Event name | Interface | Fired when... |
|---|---|---|
error
| Event
| An error occurs while fetching the media data or the type of the resource is not supported media format. |
The following events fire on AudioTrackList, VideoTrackList, and
TextTrackList objects:
| Event name | Interface | Fired when... |
|---|---|---|
change
| Event
| One or more tracks in the track list have been enabled or disabled. |
addtrack
| TrackEvent
| A track has been added to the track list. |
removetrack
| TrackEvent
| A track has been removed from the track list. |
The following event fires on TextTrack objects and track elements:
| Event name | Interface | Fired when... |
|---|---|---|
cuechange
| Event
| One or more cues in the track have become active or stopped being active. |
The following events fire on track elements:
| Event name | Interface | Fired when... |
|---|---|---|
error
| Event
| An error occurs while fetching the track data or the type of the resource is not supported text track format. |
load
| Event
| A track data has been fetched and successfully processed. |
The following events fire on TextTrackCue objects:
| Event name | Interface | Fired when... |
|---|---|---|
enter
| Event
| The cue has become active. |
exit
| Event
| The cue has stopped being active. |
The main security and privacy implications of the video and audio
elements come from the ability to embed media cross-origin. There are two directions that threats
can flow: from hostile content to a victim page, and from a hostile page to victim content.
If a victim page embeds hostile content, the threat is that the content might contain scripted
code that attempts to interact with the Document that embeds the content. To avoid
this, user agents must ensure that there is no access from the content to the embedding page. In
the case of media content that uses DOM concepts, the embedded content must be treated as if it
was in its own unrelated top-level browsing context.
For instance, if an SVG animation was embedded in a video element,
the user agent would not give it access to the DOM of the outer page. From the perspective of
scripts in the SVG resource, the SVG file would appear to be in a lone top-level browsing context
with no parent.
If a hostile page embeds victim content, the threat is that the embedding page could obtain
information from the content that it would not otherwise have access to. The API does expose some
information: the existence of the media, its type, its duration, its size, and the performance
characteristics of its host. Such information is already potentially problematic, but in practice
the same information can more or less be obtained using the img element, and so it
has been deemed acceptable.
However, significantly more sensitive information could be obtained if the user agent further
exposes metadata within the content such as subtitles or chapter titles. Such information is
therefore only exposed if the video resource uses CORS. The crossorigin attribute allows authors to enable CORS. [FETCH]
Without this restriction, an attacker could trick a user running within a corporate network into visiting a site that attempts to load a video from a previously leaked location on the corporation's intranet. If such a video included confidential plans for a new product, then being able to read the subtitles would present a serious confidentiality breach.
This section is non-normative.
Playing audio and video resources on small devices such as set-top boxes or mobile phones is
often constrained by limited hardware resources in the device. For example, a device might only
support three simultaneous videos. For this reason, it is a good practice to release resources
held by media elements when they are done playing, either by
being very careful about removing all references to the element and allowing it to be garbage
collected, or, even better, by removing the element's src
attribute and any source element descendants, and invoking the element's load() method.
Similarly, when the playback rate is not exactly 1.0, hardware, software, or format limitations can cause video frames to be dropped and audio to be choppy or muted.
This section is non-normative.
How accurately various aspects of the media element API are implemented is considered a quality-of-implementation issue.
For example, when implementing the buffered attribute,
how precise an implementation reports the ranges that have been buffered depends on how carefully
the user agent inspects the data. Since the API reports ranges as times, but the data is obtained
in byte streams, a user agent receiving a variable-bitrate stream might only be able to determine
precise times by actually decoding all of the data. User agents aren't required to do this,
however; they can instead return estimates (e.g. based on the average bitrate seen so far) which
get revised as more information becomes available.
As a general rule, user agents are urged to be conservative rather than optimistic. For example, it would be bad to report that everything had been buffered when it had not.
Another quality-of-implementation issue would be playing a video backwards when the codec is designed only for forward playback (e.g. there aren't many key frames, and they are far apart, and the intervening frames only have deltas from the previous frame). User agents could do a poor job, e.g. only showing key frames; however, better implementations would do more work and thus do a better job, e.g. actually decoding parts of the video forwards, storing the complete frames, and then playing the frames backwards.
Similarly, while implementations are allowed to drop buffered data at any time (there is no requirement that a user agent keep all the media data obtained for the lifetime of the media element), it is again a quality of implementation issue: user agents with sufficient resources to keep all the data around are encouraged to do so, as this allows for a better user experience. For example, if the user is watching a live stream, a user agent could allow the user only to view the live video; however, a better user agent would buffer everything and allow the user to seek through the earlier material, pause it, play it forwards and backwards, etc.
When a media element that is paused is removed from a document and not reinserted before the next time the event loop reaches step 1, implementations that are resource constrained are encouraged to take that opportunity to release all hardware resources (like video planes, networking resources, and data buffers) used by the media element. (User agents still have to keep track of the playback position and so forth, though, in case playback is later restarted.)
map elementname — Name of image map to reference from the usemap attribute[HTMLConstructor]
interface HTMLMapElement : HTMLElement {
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString name;
[SameObject] readonly attribute HTMLCollection areas;
};
The map element, in conjunction with an img element and any
area element descendants, defines an image map. The element
represents its children.
The name attribute gives the map a name so that
it can be referenced. The attribute must be present and must have a non-empty value with no
ASCII whitespace. The value of the name attribute
must not be equal to the value of the name attribute of
another map element in the same tree. If the id attribute is also specified, both attributes must have the same
value.
areasReturns an HTMLCollection of the area elements in the
map.
The areas attribute must return an
HTMLCollection rooted at the map element, whose filter matches only
area elements.
The IDL attribute name must reflect
the content attribute of the same name.
Image maps can be defined in conjunction with other content on the page, to ease maintenance. This example is of a page with an image map at the top of the page and a corresponding set of text links at the bottom.
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<HTML LANG="EN">
<TITLE>Babies™: Toys</TITLE>
<HEADER>
<H1>Toys</H1>
<IMG SRC="/images/menu.gif"
ALT="Babies™ navigation menu. Select a department to go to its page."
USEMAP="#NAV">
</HEADER>
...
<FOOTER>
<MAP NAME="NAV">
<P>
<A HREF="/clothes/">Clothes</A>
<AREA ALT="Clothes" COORDS="0,0,100,50" HREF="/clothes/"> |
<A HREF="/toys/">Toys</A>
<AREA ALT="Toys" COORDS="100,0,200,50" HREF="/toys/"> |
<A HREF="/food/">Food</A>
<AREA ALT="Food" COORDS="200,0,300,50" HREF="/food/"> |
<A HREF="/books/">Books</A>
<AREA ALT="Books" COORDS="300,0,400,50" HREF="/books/">
</P>
</MAP>
</FOOTER>
area elementmap element ancestor.alt — Replacement text for use when images are not availablecoords — Coordinates for the shape to be created in an image mapshape — The kind of shape to be created in an image maphref — Address of the hyperlinktarget — Browsing context for hyperlink navigationdownload — Whether to download the resource instead of navigating to it, and its file name if soping — URLs to pingrel — Relationship between the location in the document containing the hyperlink and the destination resourcereferrerpolicy — Referrer policy for fetches initiated by the element[HTMLConstructor]
interface HTMLAreaElement : HTMLElement {
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString alt;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString coords;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString shape;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString target;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString download;
[CEReactions] attribute USVString ping;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString rel;
[SameObject, PutForwards=value] readonly attribute DOMTokenList relList;
[CEReactions] attribute DOMString referrerPolicy;
};
HTMLAreaElement implements HTMLHyperlinkElementUtils;
The area element represents either a hyperlink with some text and a
corresponding area on an image map, or a dead area on an image map.
An area element with a parent node must have a map element
ancestor.
If the area element has an href
attribute, then the area element represents a hyperlink. In this case,
the alt attribute must be present. It specifies the
text of the hyperlink. Its value must be text that, when presented with the texts specified for
the other hyperlinks of the image map, and with the alternative text of the image,
but without the image itself, provides the user with the same kind of choice as the hyperlink
would when used without its text but with its shape applied to the image. The alt attribute may be left blank if there is another area
element in the same image map that points to the same resource and has a non-blank
alt attribute.
If the area element has no href
attribute, then the area represented by the element cannot be selected, and the alt attribute must be omitted.
In both cases, the shape and coords attributes specify the area.
The shape attribute is an enumerated
attribute. The following table lists the keywords defined for this attribute. The states
given in the first cell of the rows with keywords give the states to which those keywords map.
Some of the keywords are non-conforming, as noted in the last
column.
| State | Keywords | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Circle state | circle
| |
circ
| Non-conforming | |
| Default state | default
| |
| Polygon state | poly
| |
polygon
| Non-conforming | |
| Rectangle state | rect
| |
rectangle
| Non-conforming |
The attribute may be omitted. The missing value default is the rectangle state.
The coords attribute must, if specified,
contain a valid list of floating-point numbers. This attribute gives the coordinates
for the shape described by the shape attribute. The processing for this attribute is described as part of the image map
processing model.
In the circle state, area elements must
have a coords attribute present, with three integers, the
last of which must be non-negative. The first integer must be the distance in CSS pixels from the left edge of the image to the center of the circle, the
second integer must be the distance in CSS pixels from the top edge of
the image to the center of the circle, and the third integer must be the radius of the circle,
again in CSS pixels.
In the default state state, area
elements must not have a coords attribute. (The area is the
whole image.)
In the polygon state, area elements must
have a coords attribute with at least six integers, and the
number of integers must be even. Each pair of integers must represent a coordinate given as the
distances from the left and the top of the image in CSS pixels
respectively, and all the coordinates together must represent the points of the polygon, in
order.
In the rectangle state, area elements
must have a coords attribute with exactly four integers,
the first of which must be less than the third, and the second of which must be less than the
fourth. The four points must represent, respectively, the distance from the left edge of the image
to the left side of the rectangle, the distance from the top edge to the top side, the distance
from the left edge to the right side, and the distance from the top edge to the bottom side, all
in CSS pixels.
When user agents allow users to follow hyperlinks or
download hyperlinks created using the
area element, as described in the next section, the href, target, download, and ping
attributes decide how the link is followed. The rel
attribute may be used to indicate to the user the likely nature of the target resource before the
user follows the link.
The target, download, ping,
rel, and referrerpolicy attributes must be omitted if the
href attribute is not present.
If the itemprop attribute is specified on an
area element, then the href attribute must
also be specified.
The activation behavior of area elements is to run the following
steps:
If the area element's node document is not fully
active, then abort these steps.
Follow the hyperlink or download the hyperlink created by the area
element, if any, and as determined by the download
attribute and any expressed user preference.
The IDL attributes alt, coords, target, download, ping, and rel,
each must reflect the respective content attributes of the same name.
The IDL attribute shape must
reflect the shape content attribute.
The IDL attribute relList must
reflect the rel content attribute.
The IDL attribute referrerPolicy must
reflect the referrerpolicy
content attribute, limited to only known values.
An image map allows geometric areas on an image to be associated with hyperlinks.
An image, in the form of an img element or an object element
representing an image, may be associated with an image map (in the form of a map
element) by specifying a usemap attribute on
the img or object element. The usemap attribute, if specified, must be a valid
hash-name reference to a map element.
Consider an image that looks as follows:
If we wanted just the colored areas to be clickable, we could do it as follows:
<p>
Please select a shape:
<img src="shapes.png" usemap="#shapes"
alt="Four shapes are available: a red hollow box, a green circle, a blue triangle, and a yellow four-pointed star.">
<map name="shapes">
<area shape=rect coords="50,50,100,100"> <!-- the hole in the red box -->
<area shape=rect coords="25,25,125,125" href="red.html" alt="Red box.">
<area shape=circle coords="200,75,50" href="green.html" alt="Green circle.">
<area shape=poly coords="325,25,262,125,388,125" href="blue.html" alt="Blue triangle.">
<area shape=poly coords="450,25,435,60,400,75,435,90,450,125,465,90,500,75,465,60"
href="yellow.html" alt="Yellow star.">
</map>
</p>
If an img element or an object element representing an image has a
usemap attribute specified, user agents must process it
as follows:
Parse the attribute's value using the rules for parsing a hash-name reference
to a map element, with the element as the context node. This will return either an
element (the map) or null.
If that returned null, then abort these steps. The image is not associated with an image map after all.
Otherwise, the user agent must collect all the area elements that are
descendants of the map. Let those be the areas.
Having obtained the list of area elements that form the image map (the areas), interactive user agents must process the list in one of two ways.
If the user agent intends to show the text that the img element represents, then
it must use the following steps.
In user agents that do not support images, or that have images disabled,
object elements cannot represent images, and thus this section never applies (the
fallback content is shown instead). The following steps therefore only apply to
img elements.
Remove all the area elements in areas that have no href attribute.
Remove all the area elements in areas that have no alt attribute, or whose alt
attribute's value is the empty string, if there is another area element in
areas with the same value in the href attribute and with a non-empty alt attribute.
Each remaining area element in areas represents a
hyperlink. Those hyperlinks should all be made available to the user in a manner
associated with the text of the img.
In this context, user agents may represent area and img elements
with no specified alt attributes, or whose alt
attributes are the empty string or some other non-visible text, in a user-agent-defined fashion
intended to indicate the lack of suitable author-provided text.
If the user agent intends to show the image and allow interaction with the image to select
hyperlinks, then the image must be associated with a set of layered shapes, taken from the
area elements in areas, in reverse tree order (so the last
specified area element in the map is the bottom-most shape, and
the first element in the map, in tree order, is the top-most shape).
Each area element in areas must be processed as follows to
obtain a shape to layer onto the image:
Find the state that the element's shape attribute
represents.
Use the rules for parsing a list of floating-point numbers to parse the
element's coords attribute, if it is present, and let the
result be the coords list. If the attribute is absent, let the coords list
be the empty list.
If the number of items in the coords list is less than the minimum number
given for the area element's current state, as per the following table, then the
shape is empty; abort these steps.
| State | Minimum number of items |
|---|---|
| Circle state | 3 |
| Default state | 0 |
| Polygon state | 6 |
| Rectangle state | 4 |
Check for excess items in the coords list as per the entry in the
following list corresponding to the shape attribute's
state:
If the shape attribute represents the rectangle state, and the first number in the list is
numerically greater than the third number in the list, then swap those two numbers around.
If the shape attribute represents the rectangle state, and the second number in the list is
numerically greater than the fourth number in the list, then swap those two numbers around.
If the shape attribute represents the circle state, and the third number in the list is less than
or equal to zero, then the shape is empty; abort these steps.
Now, the shape represented by the element is the one described for the entry in the list
below corresponding to the state of the shape attribute:
Let x be the first number in coords, y be the second number, and r be the third number.
The shape is a circle whose center is x CSS pixels from the left edge of the image and y CSS pixels from the top edge of the image, and whose radius is r CSS pixels.
The shape is a rectangle that exactly covers the entire image.
Let xi be the (2i)th entry in coords, and yi be the (2i+1)th entry in coords (the first entry in coords being the one with index 0).
Let the coordinates be (xi, yi), interpreted in CSS pixels measured from the top left of the image, for all integer values of i from 0 to (N/2)-1, where N is the number of items in coords.
The shape is a polygon whose vertices are given by the coordinates, and whose interior is established using the even-odd rule. [GRAPHICS]
Let x1 be the first number in coords, y1 be the second number, x2 be the third number, and y2 be the fourth number.
The shape is a rectangle whose top-left corner is given by the coordinate (x1, y1) and whose bottom right corner is given by the coordinate (x2, y2), those coordinates being interpreted as CSS pixels from the top left corner of the image.
For historical reasons, the coordinates must be interpreted relative to the
displayed image after any stretching caused by the CSS 'width' and
'height' properties (or, for non-CSS browsers, the image element's width and height attributes — CSS browsers map
those attributes to the aforementioned CSS properties).
Browser zoom features and transforms applied using CSS or SVG do not affect the coordinates.
Pointing device interaction with an image associated with a set of layered shapes per the above
algorithm must result in the relevant user interaction events being first fired to the top-most
shape covering the point that the pointing device indicated, if any, or to the image element
itself, if there is no shape covering that point. User agents may also allow individual
area elements representing hyperlinks to be selected
and activated (e.g. using a keyboard).
Because a map element (and its area elements) can be
associated with multiple img and object elements, it is possible for an
area element to correspond to multiple focusable areas
of the document.
Image maps are live; if the DOM is mutated, then the user agent must act as if it had rerun the algorithms for image maps.
Support: mathmlChrome (removed) -24UC Browser for Android (limited) 11.4+iOS Safari 5.0+Firefox 2+IE NoneEdge NoneSafari 10+Opera (removed) -12.1
Source: caniuse.com
The MathML math element falls into the embedded content,
phrasing content, flow content, and palpable content
categories for the purposes of the content models in this specification.
When the MathML annotation-xml element contains elements from the
HTML namespace, such elements must all be flow content.
When the MathML token elements (mi, mo, mn, ms, and mtext) are descendants of HTML elements, they may contain
phrasing content elements from the HTML namespace.
User agents must handle text other than inter-element whitespace found in MathML
elements whose content models do not allow straight text by pretending for the purposes of MathML
content models, layout, and rendering that the text is actually wrapped in a MathML
mtext element. (Such text is not, however, conforming.)
User agents must act as if any MathML element whose contents does not match the element's
content model was replaced, for the purposes of MathML layout and rendering, by a MathML
merror element containing some appropriate error message.
To enable authors to use MathML tools that only accept MathML in its XML form, interactive HTML user agents are encouraged to provide a way to export any MathML fragment as an XML namespace-well-formed XML fragment.
The semantics of MathML elements are defined by the MathML specification and other applicable specifications. [MATHML]
Here is an example of the use of MathML in an HTML document:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>The quadratic formula</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>The quadratic formula</h1>
<p>
<math>
<mi>x</mi>
<mo>=</mo>
<mfrac>
<mrow>
<mo form="prefix">−</mo> <mi>b</mi>
<mo>±</mo>
<msqrt>
<msup> <mi>b</mi> <mn>2</mn> </msup>
<mo>−</mo>
<mn>4</mn> <mo></mo> <mi>a</mi> <mo></mo> <mi>c</mi>
</msqrt>
</mrow>
<mrow>
<mn>2</mn> <mo></mo> <mi>a</mi>
</mrow>
</mfrac>
</math>
</p>
</body>
</html>
Support: svg-html5Chrome for Android 57+Chrome 7+UC Browser for Android 11.4+iOS Safari 5.0+Firefox 4+IE 9+Samsung Internet 4+Opera Mini all+Android Browser 3+Edge 12+Safari 5.1+Opera 11.6+
Source: caniuse.com
The SVG svg element falls into the embedded content,
phrasing content, flow content, and palpable content
categories for the purposes of the content models in this specification.
To enable authors to use SVG tools that only accept SVG in its XML form, interactive HTML user agents are encouraged to provide a way to export any SVG fragment as an XML namespace-well-formed XML fragment.
When the SVG foreignObject element contains elements from the
HTML namespace, such elements must all be flow content.
The content model for the SVG title element inside HTML
documents is phrasing content. (This further constrains the requirements given
in the SVG specification.)
The semantics of SVG elements are defined by the SVG specification and other applicable specifications. [SVG]
getSVGDocument()getSVGDocument()getSVGDocument()Returns the Document object, in the case of iframe, embed, or object elements being used to embed SVG images.
The getSVGDocument() method must run
the following steps:
If the element's nested browsing context is null, then return null.
If the origin of the active document of the nested browsing context is not same origin-domain with the element's node document's origin, then return null.
If the nested browsing context's active document was created by
the page load processing model for XML files section because
the computed type of the resource in the
navigate algorithm was image/svg+xml, then return that
Document object.
Otherwise, return null.
Author requirements: The width and height attributes on img, iframe,
embed, object, video, and, when their type attribute is in the Image Button state, input elements may be
specified to give the dimensions of the visual content of the element (the width and height
respectively, relative to the nominal direction of the output medium), in CSS
pixels. The attributes, if specified, must have values that are valid non-negative integers.
The specified dimensions given may differ from the dimensions specified in the resource itself, since the resource may have a resolution that differs from the CSS pixel resolution. (On screens, CSS pixels have a resolution of 96ppi, but in general the CSS pixel resolution depends on the reading distance.) If both attributes are specified, then one of the following statements must be true:
The target ratio is the ratio of the intrinsic width to the
intrinsic height in the resource. The specified width and specified
height are the values of the width and height attributes respectively.
The two attributes must be omitted if the resource in question does not have both an intrinsic width and an intrinsic height.
If the two attributes are both zero, it indicates that the element is not intended for the user (e.g. it might be a part of a service to count page views).
The dimension attributes are not intended to be used to stretch the image.
User agent requirements: User agents are expected to use these attributes as hints for the rendering.
The width and height IDL attributes on the iframe,
embed, object, and video elements must reflect
the respective content attributes of the same name.
For iframe, embed, and object the IDL
attributes are DOMString; for video the IDL attributes are unsigned long.
The corresponding IDL attributes for img and
input elements are defined in those respective elements'
sections, as they are slightly more specific to those elements' other behaviors.