Comments on: The Doctor subscribes HTML 5 Audio cross browser support

By: whyisjasontaken

whyisjasontaken — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 14:26:50 +0000

Oh my god...


("no" != myAudio.canPlayType("audio/ogg")) && ("" != myAudio.canPlayType("audio/ogg"))

The canPlayType() method DOES NOT return a boolean?! WTF?! Who designed this API?! (I'm looking at you, WHATWG)

By: matasp

matasp — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:04:34 +0000

interesting trivia: Safari will play ogg file if you have the QuickTime ogg component( http://www.xiph.org/quicktime ) installed.
Though it will still report “no” to canPlayType(“audio/ogg”)
I’m not sure if there’s a wy to test installed Quicktime plugins.

By: randomrandom

randomrandom — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 19:10:47 +0000

The functionality of jPlayer seems OK, but I hate the philosophy behind it. I want to write semantic HTML5 and nothing else, and have a script provide a transparent fallback for old browsers. A good script library should insert fallbacks into all audio elements it encounters and implement the HTML5 scripting interface on top of those fallbacks, not an extra idiosyncratic layer of Javascript functions. It should be a shim for the standard (HTML/DOM) syntax, not introduce just another new syntax that on top is plain ugly: $("#jpId").jPlayerId( "play", "thePlayButton" );

By: sixtyseconds

sixtyseconds — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 01:17:52 +0000

…if only I knew a little actionscript…

By: sixtyseconds

sixtyseconds — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 01:14:17 +0000

@CaptainN – And really, couldn’t exactly the same shim be created with a chromeless flash video player that replaces video elements in browsers that don’t support the video element natively?

So, it would be possible to use the video/audio formats that the vendors are planning to support, and the elements that html 5 is looking to implement, in today’s browsers; without too much fuss?

By: CaptainN

CaptainN — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 22:15:35 +0000

You could actually test for OGG support specifically, and in browsers that don’t support that codec, you could use one of the SWF players (there are two different public implementations, one in HaXe, and one compiled using Adobe Alchemy). In case anyone would like to just use one format, instead of two. Of course, you could do the same for mp3. :-)

By: coryn1

coryn1 — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:05:06 +0000

@GalloNero – My concern is that even if you are using it as a patch for HTML 5 non-compliant browsers, it still requires far more work for you, me, and the average developer since even HTML 5 compliant browsers don’t agree on standard codecs for the audio and video tags. So if I want to use these tags for browsers that support them, I still need to have multiple versions of all my media, along with a library (similar to the jquery plugin above) that picks the appropriate media you’ve encoded based on HTML 5 browser. One word sums this up nicely: Yuck!

By: someguynameddylan

someguynameddylan — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:44:23 +0000

I just wanted to say thanks for doing the work up front to determine what these new browsers can do with the audio tag.

If the need arises, a dev can refer to your post to see what kind of tools they have to play with to support audio in a web page.

Thanks man!

By: kangax

kangax — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:05:09 +0000

Could someone clarify when it is that `Audio` throws error and so need to be wrapped with try-catch?

By: GalloNero

GalloNero — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:38:03 +0000

@coryn1 Maybe the point is not to eliminate Flash completely but to use it as a ‘patch’ for HTML 5 non compliant browsers so that developers can start using the tag in a meaningful and consistent manner and not worry about cross browser compatibility.

@RoryH Perhaps a consensus will be achieved but for now at least as @jamienk states, it appears that the folk behind browsers have very different ideals. It is of course still an option for developers to provide both OGG and MP3 versions of audio. It’s not THAT hard, just not ideal. Maybe people will start using OGG supporting browsers motivated by quality and/or filesize.

By: jamienk

jamienk — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:21:27 +0000

This clearly isn;t an issue of consensus, but one of politics. For Apple and MS (and Google and Opera to a lesser extent) support for standards and doing the right thing for the web are secondary to their attempts to leverage their platforms to make more money for themselves. Apple wants to exert influence over media formats so that it’s iPhone and other hardware and software can continue to operate via making controlled deals with other big companies. MS is holding out while it attempts to leverage other proprietary technologies.

Mozilla has the health of the entire web echo-system at heart. Pressure from them, and from us, may tip the scales and make it more of a priority for all browsers to support unpatented, royalty-free techologies.

By: RoryH

RoryH — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:41:28 +0000

I had such high hopes for using video and audio tags in the future, but as long as this indecision and/or lack of consensus continues between browsers it will never happen.

In order to create a substitute to Flash for multimedia playback, we need consensus.

By: MartijnHoutman

MartijnHoutman — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:36:44 +0000

Alright, VIDEO element. Where’s the preview button? :-)

By: MartijnHoutman

MartijnHoutman — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:35:06 +0000

That should have said element :-)

By: MartijnHoutman

MartijnHoutman — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:34:41 +0000

It’s the element issue all over: what codes are we going to use and support?

By: coryn1

coryn1 — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:09:33 +0000

The idea behind getting an audio and video tag was that the browser would have the ability to play media natively, without the need for plugins (such as Flash).

I don’t mean to be a negative nelly, but I don’t see this happening any time soon (if ever) the way this is shaping up.

Forget for a moment that in order to completely move off of Flash(including as a backup) you need to wait for support for these tags to become ubiquitous or for IE to make meaningful movement towards HTML 5 support; to me the real show stopper is the lack of ability of the browser vendors to agree on standard codecs.

Look; Flash wasn’t the first technology capable of displaying audio and video on the web. What made it popular was that it *was* everywhere, you no longer had to encode your media in seven different formats for all different browsers and platforms (wmv, qt, etc…etc.) – you could just encode it in Flash and it would work for everyone no matter what they were running.

To turn around and say – ‘the browser has this ability natively now; you just need to encode your media in ogg, mp3 and wav’ is a step backwards and leaves me doubting that this will ever achieve widespread adoption (let’s see, I can encode in several formats and due all kinds of checking to get it to work, or just encode in one format and know it will work…hmmm…tough decision).

I know this statement will be like pouring gasoline on flames in these parts, but: I’m for the Open Web, but not when it comes to making everything harder or providing a worse or more inconsistent user experience. I suspect you’ll find your average developer who cares more about getting his job done will feel likewise. Unfortunately for web standards, history has proven this to be true (to state the obvious, standards that have been too difficult to work with or have inconsistent implementations have seen slow or limited adoption).

By: beren

beren — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:59:44 +0000

Wouldn’t that be “The Doctor *prescribes* html 5 audio cross browser support”? That said, awesome article!