I just found this interesting little code snippet on the <video> tag demo page for the new Firefox 3.5:

<video width="640" height="360" id="video" tabindex="0" controls="">
    <source type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' src="http://videos.mozilla.org/firefox/3.5/meet/meet.ogv"/>
    <source type="video/mp4" src="http://videos.mozilla.org/firefox/3.5/meet/meet.mp4"/>

    <object data="/includes/flash/playerWithControls.swf?flv=firefox/3.5/meet/meet.mp4&amp;autoplay=false&amp;msg=Play%20Video" style="width: 640px; height: 388px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash">

        <param value="/includes/flash/playerWithControls.swf?flv=firefox/3.5/meet/meet.mp4&amp;autoplay=false&amp;msg=Play%20Video" name="movie"/>
        <param value="transparent" name="wmode"/>

        <div class="video-player-no-flash">
            This video requires a browser with support for open video:
            <ul>
                <li><a href="http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/">Firefox</a> 3.5 or greater</li>
                <li><a href="http://www.apple.com/safari/">Safari</a> 3.1 or greater</li>
            </ul>
            or the <a href="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer">Adobe Flash Player</a>.
            Alternatively, you may use the video download links to the right.
        </div>
    </object>
</video>

This works in the latest Firefox, as well as Safari. As you can see, inside of the VIDEO element is an OBJECT, which points at a Flash file as an alternative means of playing the video. This means that we can, as of this very moment, use the HTML 5 <video> tag (or the <audio> tag).

Now all you have to do is wait 5 years or more for Microsoft Internet Exploder to catch up to this code set.

Audio and Video should have been treated as objects a long time ago.

What I'd love to see is a cool tag that would allow easy implementation of sound effects and also voice-over. Hover and it speaks.

Many years ago I added some specific wav files to a customer's machine.
He was doing stupid things over and over.

After about a week of these comments every time he did something it
broke him of his habits.

How cool would it be to create a "see and say" site.

It would be phenominal for blind people.

Originally Posted by marketingman100

What I'd love to see is a cool tag that would allow easy implementation of sound effects and also voice-over. Hover and it speaks.

That could be done pretty easily with the AUDIO tag I would think, and a bit of JavaScript. Not sure how that would work, but it can't be too difficult.

Imagine:

Buttons when you hover them that say "Click me."
Links that could be recorded in any voice.
Telephone numbers that ring.
The possibilities are endless.

I saw a site many months ago where the voice-over was done in flash some way that the initial load of the site was not affected by the large audio file.

As soon as you hit the site, the dialog started.

Clicks triggered new pages and audio files.........
It was really nicely done.

Like you said, it can already be done with the help of Flash, so it is probably actually easier with the aid of the <audio> element, since it is a regular HTML element. However, it is going to be trickier to make it degrade to Flash if the HTML5 element is not available.

What you're describing could be really annoying if it is done wrong, so hopefully it won't be abused once it becomes really easy to do.

Many years ago, I had a web site I ran called "The Cemetery Shop".

One of the things I did was full Celebrity Obituaries.
On each of those pages, I had a midi song playing in the background.
.05% of the 480,000 visiters a year found it annoying, everyone else complimented on how I seemed to match the right song to the person every time.

I just told those who found it annoying to turn off their speakers before visiting the site.