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Check out some awesome HTML5 audio demos with Firefox 4 (video)
With so much continued competition surrounding the HTML5 video and canvas tags, one of the other major additions to the HTML5 specification has been all but forgotten by the media: HTML5 audio. Fortunately, the bearded magicians at Mozilla have slightly more foresight than we blood-seeking bloggers, and as a result Firefox 4 has a very cool new addition: the Audio Data API.
If you don't have Firefox 4 installed, or if you just want a quick overview of what you can expect from the next generation of HTML5 Web apps, watch the video above. If you have a nightly build of Firefox 4, play with the demos yourself! The 'beat detectors' require WebGL, which is easy enough to install.
As I discuss in the video, HTML5 audio has some really exciting applications. Combined with WebGL, in-the-browser, standards-compliant (cross-browser!) games become a reality. We'll soon see a YouTube Web app that lets you edit both video and audio -- you'll be able to normalize sound, play with individual channels, cut, splice and so on. How about TV-to-the-browser, with the end-user retaining complete control over the audio stream and its playback? Or, best of all, volume normalization -- imagine an HTML5 add-on that simply turns down the volume on really noisy pages. Bliss.
Finally, if you're a developer, or if you just want to play around with HTML5 audio, Mozilla already has some JavaScript libraries that make the development process both easy and fast. If you need proof, right click and view the source code behind the demos -- most of them use just a few lines of code!
I can't believe we're now able to write music with JavaScript... what a crazy and wonderful world we live in.
Comments
4
Subscribe to commentsishidaSep 1st 2010 12:46PM
Interesting video. It's cool how you can use the visualizations like the one where you're flying above the plane of beats.
DeoWulfSep 1st 2010 1:26PM
What was the song from the first demo? Sounded like it was getting good when he cut it off.
You say this requires a nightly, I take it that the beta won't work. At least, it doesn't seem to work for me.
Sebastian AnthonySep 1st 2010 1:29PM
Hrm, I honestly haven't tried it with a beta build. The nightlies are only one build ahead of beta (b5 instead of b4). I would have to check the change logs to confirm though (or just go ahead and try a nightly!)
The tunes are all creative commons stuff, I think. Go and listen to it! It will work in any browser.
ishidaSep 1st 2010 1:50PM
What about Beta 6 Preview? That version just became live today.