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- What is it?
- The OBJECT tag is a new proposal from W3 that will replace and
absorb the many methods in use to include multi-media and embedded content
in HTML documents. This tag can replace all of the functionality in the
existing APPLET, EMBED, and IMG tags. In order to achieve this, the tag
has many attributes that require some explanation.
When using OBJECT in place of the APPLET tag, the PARAM tag is used inside
the OBJECT tag contents exactly as it would inside an
APPLET tag.
- Attributes
- Align
- 2
| 3 | 3.2
| IE3A1 | M
| N
- Required? No
- Description:
This attribute specifies the alignment of text following the OBJECT
reference relative to the object on screen. LEFT and RIGHT specify
floating horizontal alignment of the object in the browser window,
and subsequent text will wrap around the object. The other options
specify vertical alignment of text relative to the object on the
same line.
- Values:
Left | Right |
Top | Texttop |
Middle | Absmiddle |
Baseline | Bottom |
Absbottom
- Border
- 2
| 3 | 3.2
| IE3A1 | M
| N
- Required? No
- Description:
This controls the thickness of the border around the object (in pixels.)
- Values:
0, for no border, or a positive integer
value.
- ClassID
- 2
| 3 | 3.2
| IE3A1 | M
| N
- Required? No
- Description:
This attribute is a URL indicating the implementation for the OBJECT.
In some systems this is a class identifier.
- Values: An absolute or relative URL
- CodeBase
- 2
| 3 | 3.2
| IE3A1 | M
| N
- Required? No
- Description:
This attribute allows the author to specify the URL of the OBJECT's
implementation, which some URL schemes require in addition to the
CLASSID URL.
- Values: An absolute or relative URL
- CodeType
- 2
| 3 | 3.2
| IE3A1 | M
| N
- Required? No
- Description:
This attribute specifies the MIME type of the code referenced by the
CLASSID attribute in advance of actually retrieving it. Browsers may
use this value to skip over unsupported MIME types without needing to
make a network access.
- Values: Alphanumeric MIME type
- Data
- 2
| 3 | 3.2
| IE3A1 | M
| N
- Required? No
- Description:
This attribute indicates a URL pointing to the OBJECTs data, such as a
GIF file for an image. If the CLASSID attribute is absent, the media
(MIME) type of the data is used to determine a default value for the
CLASSID attribute. The implementation is then loaded as if the CLASSID
attribute had been explicitly specified.
- Values: An absolute or relative URL
- Declare
- 2
| 3 | 3.2
| IE3A1 | M
| N
- Required? No
- Description:
This is a stand-alone attribute which indicates an object that is not
created or instantiated until needed by something that references it
(i.e. late binding.) Each such "binding" typically results in
a separate copy of the object (this is class dependent.) So in such cases,
DECLARE is treated as a declaration for making an instance of an object.
See the DECLARE
explanation in the OBJECT specification for more details.
- Values: NA
- Height
- 2
| 3 | 3.2
| IE3A1 | M
| N
- Required? No
- Description:
This attribute explicitly specifies the height of the object in pixels.
It can be used to speed up display of the document being downloaded so it
can pre-render the document with object placeholders while the object
downloads.
- Values: Positive integer pixel values
- HSpace
- 2
| 3 | 3.2
| IE3A1 | M
| N
- Required? No
- Description:
This attribute specifies the horizontal spacing around objects in
pixels (left and right padding.)
- Values: Positive integer pixel values
- Name
- 2
| 3 | 3.2
| IE3A1 | M
| N
- Required? No
- Description:
This provides a way for the object to participate in a FORM submission
process. If the NAME attribute is specified and the DECLARE attribute is
absent, then the browser should use the data obtained from the OBJECT
[the method used to obtain the data from the object is specific to each
object] paired with the NAME in the FORM submission process.
- Values: Alphanumeric string
- Shapes
- 2
| 3 | 3.2
| IE3A1 | M
| N
- Required? No
- Description:
This attribute indicates the OBJECT contains hyperlinks associated with
shaped regions of the visible area of the OBJECT. When this attribute is
used, the contents of the OBJECT tag will be hyperlinks with new hybrid
client-side image mapping attributes. These are used to create a backward
compatible system for map navigation. Please see the Extensions to the
Hyperlink [A HREF] tag for
implementation details of this attribute.
- Values: See above
- Standby
- 2
| 3 | 3.2
| IE3A1 | M
| N
- Required? No
- Description:
This allows you to specify a short text string for the browser to display
while it loads the OBJECT's implementation and data. The character data
can include character entities.
- Values: Alphanumeric text
- Type
- 2
| 3 | 3.2
| IE3A1 | M
| N
- Required? No
- Description:
This attribute specifies the MIME type of the data referenced in the DATA
attribute in advance of retrieving it. In the absence of the CLASSID
attribute, it allows the browser to retrieve the code implementing the
OBJECT concurrently with the data and to skip over unsupported MIME
types without having to make network accesses.
- Values: Alphanumeric MIME type
- UseMap
- 2
| 3 | 3.2
| IE3A1 | M
| N
- Required? No
- Description:
This attribute specifies the URL (usually internal to the document) of
the client-side image map specification to be used if the browser has
that capability. If the argument to USEMAP begins with a "#"
it is assumed to be in the same document as the OBJECT tag. Client-side
coordinate mapping is done by the browser, so is inherently faster in
processing the coordinates than the old ISMAP process for the IMG tag.
This is usually only used for static image OBJECTs.
- Values: An absolute or relative URL
or an internal anchor name.
- VSpace
- 2
| 3 | 3.2
| IE3A1 | M
| N
- Required? No
- Description:
This attribute specifies the vertical spacing around objects in pixels
(top and bottom padding.)
- Values: Positive integer pixel values
- Width
- 2
| 3 | 3.2
| IE3A1 | M
| N
- Required? No
- Description:
This attribute explicitly specifies the width of the object in pixels.
It can be used to speed up display of the document being downloaded so it
can pre-render the document with object placeholders while the object
downloads.
- Values: Positive integer pixel values
Style Sheet Attributes
[More on Cascading Style Sheets]
- Class
- 2 | 3
| 3.2 | IE3B1
| M | N
- Required? No
- Description:
This represents an assigned semantic classification grouping(s) for the
current tag.
- Values:
Given as a comma separated list of alphanumeric characters. Class names
may contain spaces (multiple consecutive spaces treated as a single
space.)
- ID
- 2 | 3
| 3.2 | IE3B1
| M | N
- Required? No
- Description:
This assigns an alpha-numeric identifier that is unique
to this tag instance. Style sheets may use this attribute to reference
the current instance of this tag. Hyperlinks may also use this identifier
to serve as a destination.
- Values:
An alphanumeric string - initial character must be a letter followed
by alphabetic characters, digits, "-" or "."
characters. The allowable set of alpha-characters is restricted to the
A-Z and a-z set.
- Style
- 2 | 3
| 3.2 | IE3B1
| M | N
- Required? No
- Description:
This attribute is a text string that provides rendering style
information for the current tag.
- Values:
Please see the description of
inline styles for more
information on how to use this attribute and its
possible values.
- Example
- <object
CODETYPE="application/java-vm"
CODEBASE="http://www.foo.com/applet.class"
CLASSID="java:program.start"
HEIGHT="100"
WIDTH="100">
<param NAME="options"
VALUE="xqz">
If you can read this you are too close.<br>
AND your browser does not support Java.
</object>
- Parent Model
-
%Anchors% |
%Virtual
Formatting% |
%Physical
Formatting% |
%Block Format
Parent% |
%Multimedia
Parent% |
<Body> |
<Address> |
<Basefont> |
<Heading> |
<Marquee>
- Content Model
- %Text% |
%Anchors% |
%Virtual Formatting% |
%Physical Formatting% |
%Line Break Content% |
%Multimedia Content% |
%Block Content% |
<address> |
<basefont> |
<Hx> |
<param>
Tips & Tricks
- I have to say that I have not really used this tag much yet, so
can not offer any advice in this area. Most content for this page
was taken directly from the
OBJECT draft
specification.
- The official specification for this tag also adds functionality to
the A tag allowing an author to specify region definition of a
clickable image map. This is accomplished through the addition
of attributes to the hyperlink (A HREF) tag. This gives better
backward compatibility with HTML 2.0, but Internet Explorer
does not support this part of the Object draft yet.
Browser Peculiarities
- Internet Explorer 3.0 only appears to support the use of OBJECT
for use in replacing the APPLET and EMBED tags.
- The use of OBJECT for creating shaped hyperlinks is not
supported in Internet Explorer 3.0
- Use of OBJECT to import images, videos and sounds is also
not supported by Internet Explorer 3.0
- The Internet Explorer 3.0 online tag reference lists support for
attributes known as NOTAB, TABINDEX, and TITLE for several tags.
IE3 shows no signs that it actually supports these attributes in
practice (brief explanations of the attributes available at the
online reference URL.)
- Late versions of Netscape 4.0 seem to support this tag after a
fashion. It is nowhere near complete with respect to the W3C
specification, and is often spotty. PC versions of 4.0 do not
seem to have OBJECT support (although late betas seem to have had
some), while a final Macintosh version of 4.0 did support it under
at least one case. If any real support exists for this tag in Netscape 4.0,
it would appear to be an exception to the rule of the specification.
Boring Copyright Stuff...