Breakthroughs In HTML Audio Via Manipulation With JavaScript

jamienk writes "Imagine if you could grab and manipulate audio with JavaScript just like you can images with Canvas. Firefox experimental builds let you do just that: crazy audio visualizations, a graphic equalizer, even text-to-speech, all in JavaScript! Work in progress; you need a special build of Firefox (videos available), being worked on via W3C."

Re:I'm all for this

[Yvan256]

FYI, Quicktime is not awful at all on Mac OS X, nor is Safari and iTunes. And almost everything from Microsoft and Adobe sucks on Mac OS X.

I don't know why you associate Quicktime with online audio, so what you probably meant to say was "The quicker we can get away from our reliance on that god awful Flash, the better."

Be prepared for another "Firefox vs the World" with this, however: Vorbis vs MP3/AAC.

Re:Pac-Man

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that was Flash, and it caused lots of ire, particularly in combination with Firefox plugin that loaded the Google homepage in the background. I hope there'll be a sound=off option, because I still remember the 90s and web pages with MIDI sounds.

Screen readers...

[dclozier]

This will be fantastic for aiding those that have vision impairments. The 503 compliance will end up including this if it is ever standardized. (w3c not known for speed)

HTML 5 is AMAZING!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

awesome, you could do that in Flash 5 years ago.

Re:Dear Internet: Sorry.

[Darkness404]

You mean that you expect this to actually be used?

IE doesn't even have support for canvas, Firefox has had it from 3.0 at least, and I think even 2.0 had some support.

If IE still has more than 30% worldwide marketshare, and doesn't have basic requirements for this, its not going to be used. Period.

Canvas has been around for ages and is there even a single practical example on a site people use daily? Yeah, there are about a million tech demos but very little actual use because IE doesn't support it.

Re:HTML 5 is AMAZING!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you serious? I didn't know that you couldn't see Flash things if you don't have Flash. Shoot, I didn't even think about that. I wonder how many browsers have flash 8 or better installed, oh 99%

FYI, Flash is open, you can develop it for free, you could even write your own Flash player if you were so inclined. One more time FLASH IS OPEN! Adobe must be fucking crazy and closed for trying to make money by selling their version of an IDE and Player.

wisdom

[The Clockwork Troll]

It was Chris Rock, who said, "You can do it, but that don't mean it's to be done."