object

DITA's <object> element corresponds to the HTML <object> element.

The <object> element allows authors to include animated images, applets, plug-ins, ActiveX controls, video clips, and other multimedia objects in a topic for rendering after transformation to HTML.

To support Flash animations and movies, the value swflash.cab is checked in the codebase attribute. That enables the OBJECT tag in the HTML to display Flash objects in Intenet Explorer. The enable these to display in browsers such as NetScape and FireFox, an EMBED tag is also added to the HTML. Note that while the Embed tag is required to display these objects, the Embed tag is not in the XHTML 1.0 Transitional tag set.

Example

Output processors may need to modify data to enable compatible function across various browsers, so these examples are only representative:

<p>Cutting the keys from the system unit:</p>
<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000"
 codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/
flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0"
 data="cutkey370.swf"
 type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
 height="280"
 width="370"
 id="cutkey370">
 <desc>A description of the task</desc>
 <param name="movie" value="cutkey370.swf"/>
 <param name="quality" value="high"/>
 <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF"/>
</object>

<p>What's EIM?</p>
<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000"
 codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/
flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0"
 data="eim.swf"
 height="400"
 width="500"
 id="eim">
 <desc>Some great, glorious info</desc>
 <param name="movie" value="eim.swf"/>
 <param name="quality" value="high"/>
 <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF"/>
 <param name="pluginspace"
 value="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"/>
</object>

Contains

Doctype	Content model
ditabase, topic, task, reference, concept, glossary, map, bookmap	( ( desc) (optional) then ( param) (any number) then ( foreign or unknown) (any number) )

Contained by

Doctype	Parents
ditabase	data, p, note, lq, li, itemgroup, dd, fig, stentry, draft-comment, fn, entry, abstract, body, section, example, conbody, prereq, context, info, tutorialinfo, stepxmp, choice, choptionhd, chdeschd, choption, chdesc, stepresult, result, postreq, refsyn, proptypehd, propvaluehd, propdeschd, glossdef, pd
topic	data, p, note, lq, li, itemgroup, dd, fig, stentry, draft-comment, fn, entry, abstract, body, section, example, pd
task	data, p, note, lq, li, itemgroup, dd, fig, stentry, draft-comment, fn, entry, abstract, body, section, example, prereq, context, info, tutorialinfo, stepxmp, choice, choptionhd, chdeschd, choption, chdesc, stepresult, result, postreq, pd
concept	data, p, note, lq, li, itemgroup, dd, fig, stentry, draft-comment, fn, entry, abstract, body, section, example, conbody, pd
reference	data, p, note, lq, li, itemgroup, dd, fig, stentry, draft-comment, fn, entry, abstract, body, section, example, refsyn, proptypehd, propvaluehd, propdeschd, pd
map, bookmap	data, p, note, lq, li, itemgroup, dd, fig, stentry, draft-comment, fn, entry

Inheritance:

- topic/object

Attributes

Name	Description	Data Type	Default Value	Required?
declare	When this attribute is set to declare, the current object definition is a declaration only. The object must be instantiated by a later nested object definition referring to this declaration.	declare	#IMPLIED	No
classid	Contains a URL that specifies the location of an object's implementation. It can be used together with the data attribute which is specified relative to the value of the codebase attribute.	CDATA	#IMPLIED	No
codebase	Specifies the base path (a URL) used for resolving the URL values given for classid, data, and archive attributes. If codebase is not set, the default is the base URL of the current document.	CDATA	#IMPLIED	No
data	Contains a reference to the location of an object's data. If this attribute is a URL, it is specified relative to the value of the codebase attribute. If this attribute is set, the type attribute should also be set.	CDATA	#IMPLIED	No
type	Indicates the content type for the data specified by the data attribute. This attribute should be set when the data attribute is set to avoid loading unsupported content types. Note that this differs from the type attribute on many other DITA elements.	CDATA	#IMPLIED (No default type)	No
codetype	Indicates the content type for the data specified by the classid attribute. This attribute should be set when the classid attribute is set to avoid loading unsupported content types. If this attribute value is not set, the default is the value of the type attribute.	CDATA	#IMPLIED	No
archive	Specifies a space-separated list of URLs indicating resources needed by the object. These resources may include those URLs specified by the classid and data attributes. Preloading these resources usually results in faster loadtimes for objects. The URLs in the list should be relative to the URL specified in the codebase attribute.	CDATA	#IMPLIED	No
standby	Contains a message to be displayed while an object is loading.	CDATA	#IMPLIED	No
height	Indicates the vertical dimension for the resulting object display. If necessary, the object is scaled to the specified size. The value of this attribute is a real number optionally following by a unit of measure from the set of pc, pt, px, in, cm, mm, em (picas, points, pixels, inches, centimeters, millimeters, and ems respectively). The default unit is px (pixels). Possible values include: "5", "5in", and "10.5cm". If a height value is specified and no width value is specified, the width will be scaled by the same factor as the height. If both a height value and width value are specified, some implementations may not be able to scale the two directions by a different factor and may therefore ignore one of the two values.	NMTOKEN	#IMPLIED	No
width	Indicates the horizontal dimension for the resulting object display. If necessary, the object is scaled to the specified size. The value of this attribute is a real number optionally following by a unit of measure from the set of pc, pt, px, in, cm, mm, em (picas, points, pixels, inches, centimeters, millimeters, and ems respectively). The default unit is px (pixels). Possible values include: "5", "5in", and "10.5cm". If a width value is specified and no height value is specified, the height will be scaled by the same factor as the width. If both a height value and width value are specified, some implementations may not be able to scale the two directions by a different factor and may therefore ignore one of the two values.	NMTOKEN	#IMPLIED	No
usemap	Indicates that a client-side image map is to be used. An image map specifies active geometric regions of an included object and assigns a link to each region. When a link is selected, a document may be retrieved or a program may run on the server.	CDATA	#IMPLIED	No
name	Defines a unique name for the object.	CDATA	#IMPLIED	No
tabindex	Position the object in tabbing order.	NMTOKEN	#IMPLIED	No
longdescref	A reference to a textual description of the graphic or object. This attribute supports creating accessible content. It uses standard href syntax. This may be a reference to another DITA topic, or to a non-DITA description. For examples of how this attribute is used in output, see this this topic on long descriptions.	CDATA	#IMPLIED	No
%univ-atts; (%select-atts;, %id-atts;, %localization-atts;)	A set of related attributes, described at %univ-atts;	parameter entity	PE not applicable	Not applicable
%global-atts; (xtrf, xtrc)	A set of related attributes, described at %global-atts;	parameter entity	PE not applicable	Not applicable
class, outputclass	Common attributes described in Other common DITA attributes