Skip by time and skip by track about mediasession

[foolip]

Yeah, this is really nice. One problem we need to solve if we have an API for this is that it should be possible to suggest to the platform an interval to skip, but I'm not sure we should assume that all platforms will support any interval (e.g. it might not be possible to generate the graphics for >99 seconds due to space constraints) so the seek command would also need to have the actual interval to skip. It could also be that some platform has gestures that always mean "skip 10 seconds" but that's more hypothetical.

[marcoscaceres]

Agree. Just a time hint would be nice.

[richtr]

FWIW, we added MediaRemoteControls to the spec today: https://mediasession.spec.whatwg.org/#the-mediaremotecontrols-interface. That gives us a good foundation to explore questions like these.

For example, I think we could enforce skip interval and its behavior directly against media elements in this model. Something like the following could work:

session.controls.skipForwardEnabled = true;
session.controls.skipForwardInterval = 30; // in seconds (min 1, max 99, default: OS-defined)

When the 'skip forward' button is pressed it could directly set mediaElement.currentTime += 30 (where mediaElement is the active media session's active participating media element).

I'm not married to the idea. Just brainstorming :)

[foolip]

Yeah, if the seek fires an event and it isn't preventDefault()ed, just seeking on the media elements would be reasonable thing to do. I guess it's really only when we get into Web Audio that we'll have to allow handling the seeking in script, though.

[jernoble]

I'm fine with having a seek-by hint so long as the spec is fine with that hint being completely ignored.

[mounirlamouri]

I think the current spec solves this. You have next track and skip forward. The latter can easily have a default implementation if needed but websites should likely implement their own.