What's the status of embed?

[musicales]

I've been looking at the best way of offering midi samples and frankly embeding it can look very very tidy and nice. I have a vague feeling it's been de-moted or whatever happens like <font> tags - are we supposed to use embed or not?

[Paul in South Africa]

Have a look at this thread [webmasterworld.com].

[musicales]

thanks paul - that makes things even more unclear! Am I right in thinking that means embed will stop altogether working in some future version of IE. If so that's the end of flash isn't it?

[Paul in South Africa]

MS will appeal the judgement so another 18 months or more will probably go by before anything concrete is decided. I guess that it will be business as usual until then.

[rcjordan]

>If so that's the end of flash isn't it?

That's the way I interpret it. I certainly wouldn't start a large project dependent upon flash until this shakes out.

[musicales]

blimey - that's VERY big news.

[MonkeeSage]

Flash works just as well in the non-deprecated <object> element, so I doubt it will be the end of Flash. Just means that Flash sites currently using <embed> will evenetually need to be reworked, just like sites using <font> and <strike> or <del> will eventually need to be.

Jordan

[musicales]

MonkeeSage - do you know if you can use <object> for midi files? And how cross-browser is <object>?
Thanks

[MonkeeSage]

musicales:

I would imagine so for midi files, probably something to the effect of:

<object data="somefile.mid" type="application/x-midi">
</object>

AFAIK, it is supported in all newer browsers, probably generation 3 and up, but I'm not certain.

Here is the W3C rec for <object> elements:
[w3.org...]

Jordan