etianen/html5media — Issue #26: control autohide behavior causes confusion in various browsers
Author: GreggEckhardt
Created: 2011-12-23 02:33:08+00:00
State: open

I have noticed that in Safari 5.06, the control bar stays visible until the video is started, so it's not really necessary to have a poster image.

But in IE 8 and Firefox 8.0.1, the control bar autohides afer a few seconds, so you really need a poster image or people might not realize it's a video.

It would be better if this was consistent; if I had to pick, I would choose the Safari method, because mobile devices like the iPhone provide their own start button, so it's cleaner not to have a poster image at all.

Confusion is created because Safari won't start the video playing by clicking the poster image, you have to start it using the control bar. So if you provide a poster image for IE and Firefox users, Safari users are confused because they see the start button in the poster image, click on it, and nothing happens.

It would be great if someone had some ideas about how to make the control bar behavior consistent across the major browsers.