Question

I have an object in a page that has neither data nor type so is invalid HTML5. The object is actually just a placeholder and gets replaced by Javascript depending on the browser and Flash support. I can’t change the way that works or use an element other than object.

I want to provide a type purely for the purposes of validation. According to RFC4735 I can use example/something or video/example but the word example looks bad, like I’ve forgotten to replace it.

Can I safely use type="video/arbitraryunregisteredword" instead? I want all browsers to ignore it.

Edit: I’ve now discovered that Firefox will show a missing plugin prompt when anything unrecognised is specified for type. Is there any way round this?

Answer 1

Possibly not quite what you’re looking for, but I’d pick a content type that the browser already knows how to deal with. e.g. text/html or text/plain