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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."
So I'm guessing it only supports FLAC and Ogg Vorbis?
The quicker we can get away from our reliance on that god awful Quicktime, the better.
Pac-Man played sound on the Google homepage, wasn't that done in JavaScript?
Summation 2
All I can think of is <BLINK> </BLINK> turned into audio!
Of course this has good uses (blind users with scripts available), but I can see how this will end badly for the rest of us.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
All these breakthroughs in Canvas and Javascript are useful, but will they be used?
Until IE implements even half these features, we will be stuck with "Quick"Time and Flash for quite some time...
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
music to my ears. Finally I will be able to listen to midis without a plugin.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
So... I won't be needing the Crescendo! plugin anymore for playing back great sounding MIDI music from people's gif-laden web pages?
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)
You mean annoying like people who put their comments between <code> tags?
awesome, you could do that in Flash 5 years ago.
even text-to-speech, all in JavaScript!
WooHoo! I'm gonna have hidden fields in my web pages so this "text to speech" will say one thing while the text on the screen will say another!
nice to see a language I've spent 10+ of my years working with taking over the field completely.
How long will Java script reign?
Long live Java script!
the future os is the browser
the future os programming language is javascript
enjoy!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Wow, Ned been hitting the sacramental wine again?
welcome to flash 8.
Well, he's a disciplined programmer, he puts comments in his code.
Ezekiel 23:20
You know, there are already PLENTY of applications out there that blind users can use to turn text on screen to speech? And that a lot of people prefer to disable javascript from running?
Last thing we need is an "on Hover" Javascript ad, you mouse over, and audio gets maximized "FIND YOUR MATCH @ ADULTFINDER.COM!"
From what I've read, there was an off-screen flash helper playing the audio, and I'm not surprised. It's nigh impossible to get reliable audio with JavaScript only. People have been doing some experiments with stuffing data urls into , , and tags for a while now (heck, I've been doing it since last fall) in order to programmatically generate audio, but it generally suffers from performance issues and various glitches for a while now. You can mostly pull it off only if you stick with MIDI or you use Flash or Java to deliver the audio.
Here's something I didn't get until recently: Audio is in some ways harder than video. It's more timing sensitive. With video, you're generally slinging a lot more data per frame, but you can get away with *much* lower frame rates... 24 fps works, 60's not bad, and you don't have to get much higher than that to pass the threshold of perception. With audio, very small "frames"/samples will hold adequately resolved data from one point in the signal, but you have to move a lot *more* of them (44,100 of 'em per second for CD quality audio) and move them *reliably* in order to get sound fidelity. JavaScript timing might be millisecond reliable except in IE, but it's not microsecond reliable. Totally realtime programmatic sound is probably out of the question for a while.
But, programmatic generation of the audio *data* is possible now, and you can probably precompute enough things ahead of time that if they can work the bugs out of the audio tag or something else to enable microsecond level starting/stoping/looping of playback, then pure JavaScript audio would get real wings.
Tweet, tweet.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Can you hear me now?
Sounds like the lyrics for a future Weird Al Yankovic song.
Goddamn it, why don't I ever have mod points when I need them?
Ummm, I've got an idea! Lets go back 10 years in web standards and technologies..... I find the current HTML5 craze silly. You want wicked audio tools in your browser, try this: http://www.audiotool.com/ Oh its Flash and it kicks the HTML5 audio tag's ass.
it does not help me one bit with building a beowulf cluster of javascript engines.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
This:
was meant to be
Tweet, tweet.
*I'm deaf, you insensitive clod
*I have my sound off, you insensitive clod
Please add more....
It was Chris Rock, who said, "You can do it, but that don't mean it's to be done."
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
If internet explorer implemented something like this, then we would be complaining about the lack of web standards, but when Mozilla does it, then it is a breakthrough.
awesome, you could do that in Flash 5 years ago.
awesome, you could do that in a Win32 app 15 years ago.
Of course this has good uses (blind users with scripts available)
I'm confused. You think blinding users with scripts is a good use? And yet you speak ill of <BLINK>, which was often used for that very purpose.
Last thing we need is an "on Hover" Javascript ad, you mouse over, and audio gets maximized "FIND YOUR MATCH @ ADULTFINDER.COM!"
Can't that be done now with Flash?
In all honest ignorance and curiosity, how so, aside from the patent legal issues? Are the file sizes smaller? Is playback processor load less? Is playback quality at a set sampling rate audibly better? Etc., etc.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Actually, I'm building an enterprisy application right now that uses the canvas tag to emulate a 3D environment. We support IE via the Google Chrome Frame. So there's one way around your problem and one example of people using canvas in the real world.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
No, if IE implemented it we'd be complaining that it's proprietary technology, when Mozilla implements it we just complain that it's a stupid idea.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
If IE still has more than 30% worldwide marketshare, and doesn't have basic requirements for this, its not going to be used. Period.
People who use "Period" to end their sentences are close minded absolutists with no capacity for argument, contrary views or the small possibility that they may just be completely wrong. Period.
Seriously dude, this is a technology news site. Period. A good proportion of readers will see this as being cool and may knock up a few 'tech demo' pages to do some tricky stuff. Period. That means the technology has been used. Period. Someone may come up with 'the next big thing' that the commercial sites decide they cant live without. Period. MS will eventually patch in canvas support and you can go and declare your authoritative prophecies on other ideas. Period.
Next time, try the following, less inflammatory statement and watch the world explode into smiles, cuddles and happiness:
If IE still has more than 30% worldwide marketshare, and doesn't have basic requirements for this, its probably not going to be used on any significant or commercial scale.
IE9 will have Canvas
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
Any chance google will help Microsoft along again? (Heh, I'll bet MS *loves* that!)
Have you published your experiments anywhere?
I talked about them a little bit at the December BayJax Meetup, and I've been meaning to turn that presentation into a web page since then, but I haven't.
However... I've also been meaning to create an audio-focused JavaScript mailing list so that when I do put it up, I'd have somewhere to announce it. And thanks to your comment, I just got off my butt and created the js-audio Google Group. :)
http://groups.google.com/group/js-audio
I'd love to have you or anyone else join and share what you've observed and experimented with yourself, and I'll be posting my experiments there in due time.
Tweet, tweet.
The boundary is being breached by the form field on your right column. One's eye just jumps right to it. I'm using Firefox 3.6.4.
...that was needed to be able to actually make a decent 3D game in JavaScript. Sure, I'd prefer OpenAL bindings, but this'll work.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Now if Sansa would only come out with a large storage device that has a screen at least as big as a Zune (and hopefully as big as an iPod Touch).
If you want an "Android Pod Touch", get an Archos tablet.
awesome, you could do that in a Win32 app 15 years ago.
You have to be a member of the Administrators group to install a native app. You do not have to be a member of the Administrators group to run a Flash object, a JavaScript program, or a Java applet, because the web developer can safely assume that every PC already has players for one or more of these.
I'm amazed someone hasn't just entered a patent for "Stuff that does shit. Fuck yeah." Cause, given the state of the USPTO, it would probably hold up.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
>> even text-to-speech
This is great. Now porn websites can save bandwidth by sending dialogs and love sounds as text, and letting them the T2S engine speak them out on your side.
Do even 1% of IE users have chrome frame?
why not just use it and live with the consequences, if you're site needs this, then obviously it needs it and you'll have to live without people using IE. why does everyone think that because it's not supported in IE, you can't do it. fuck IE, if they don't want to play ball, then screw them and do what you want anyway, if my site requires firefox to view it, then you open it in firefox, if it requires safari v3.0+ then it requires safari. if you want to see what i've done, reopen in the browser required and see what I've done. if you're not interested, then ok, no problem, the site can't help you, bye bye, have a nice day. no biggie, no problems, no fuss, just, that..
Demoscene in my browser!
: If IE still has more than 30% worldwide marketshare, and doesn't have basic requirements for this, its not going to be used. Period.
IE is being retrofitted:
~ Canvas: http://code.google.com/p/explorercanvas/
~ HTML, CSS, PNG: http://code.google.com/p/ie7-js/
When did Windows prevent normal users from just running executables?
Software Restriction Policies started in Windows XP. This is similar to the UNIX feature of mounting /home noexec.
Good to know, thank you for the reply.
I have a sizable existing library of MP3 files. Would it be worth the trouble to transcode these into Ogg? Would this process be problematically lossy? And will iPods will play Ogg files? (This last is curiosity; I don't use iTunes, so it's not too much trouble to wipe my iPod and put something in it that plays Oggs.)
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."