HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
12.2.3.10. The object attribute
This unfortunately named attribute and its string value reference the
name of the resource that contains a serialized version of the applet.
How and what it does is an enigma; none of the popular browsers sup-
ports it.
12.2.4. The <embed> Tag (Extension)
At one time, the
<embed>
tag was the only way you could include a ref-
erence in your document for the browser to handle some special plug-in
application and perhaps data for that application. Today's standard is
the
<object>
tag with the
data
attribute, and we recommend that you
use it in lieu of
<embed>
. Nonetheless,
<embed>
currently remains well sup-
ported by all the popular browsers.
With
<embed>
, you reference the data object via the
src
attribute and URL
value for download by the browser. The browser uses the MIME type of
the
src
'd object to determine the plug-in that is required to process the
object. Alternatively, you may also use the
type
attribute to specify a
MIME type without an object and thereby initiate execution of a plug-in
application, if it exists on the user's computer.
Like all other tags, the nonstandard
<embed>
tag extension has a set of
predefined attributes that define parameters and modify the tag's be-
havior. Unlike most other tags, however, the browsers let you include
plug-in-specific name/value attribute pairs in
<embed>
that, instead of al-
tering the action of the tag itself, get passed to the plug-in application
for further processing.
