[foms] WebVTT implementation in browsers

[Silvia Pfeiffer]

Hi everyone,

I am collecting opinions about the need for better support of WebVTT
in browsers. Please speak up for or against it.

This is on the background of getting WebVTT to become a W3C
recommendation, which is what we are working on in the Timed Text
Working Group (TTWG) right now.

In my experience, having a spec at recommendation status is a key
motivator to get browsers to implement features interoperably. Basic
support is in all browsers, but interoperability is so poor that it's
basically unusable for normal Web publishing.

I'd like to hear from browsers if a stable published specification of
WebVTT would encourage them to implement support.

I'd like to hear from video player developers if they would drop their
polyfills if browsers supported WebVTT in its completeness. (Browsers
want to know this also.)

And I'd like to hear from video publishers if native WebVTT support
would encourage them to publish more captions.

If you have any opinion, please reply for yourself and/or your
company. I'm collecting feedback for the TTWG mailing list.

Cheers,
Silvia.


P.S. The WebVTT version in preparation for the standards track can be
inspected at https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/w3c/webvtt/blob/gh-pages/archives/2018-04-15/Overview.html
(some links won't work because it's rendered through htmlpreview).