[thelist] Can't get embedded media to play with JavaScript
John Dowdell
jdowdell at adobe.com
Fri Jul 20 11:17:19 CDT 2007
Rick den Haan wrote:
> On an AJAX-heavy application, sometimes sound effects are required. To do
> this, on page load, a couple of WAV files are embedded into the HTML
> document from an external JS file using DOM. I'm using EMBED here because
> this should be cross-platform, and I don't want to force a particular
> player. Who knows what plugin the visitor is using to play back a WAV file,
> it could be WMP, QuickTime, RealPlayer, and who knows what else. So I'll let
> the browser figure it out for itself.
This is possible, but may be difficult. If you present a WAV and intend
to control it with JavaScript, then two conditions must be met:
(a) whichever WAV player is set as each audience member's default
player must be able to accept JavaScript commands;
(b) whichever browser is set as each audience member's default browser
must be able to send JavaScript messages to plugins.
Among conformant WAV players and browsers, there can be slightly
different syntax, as you've already seen. But this doesn't mean that all
audience configurations will be able to support JavaScript control over
audio.
The standard approach is to handle interactive audio duties through
Adobe Flash Player 9, which is currently installed into well over 90% of
the world's browsers. The interactivity and media can both be handled in
the same environment, and so cuts the development and maintainence costs
of trying to get each possible browser to accurately communicate with
each possible audio engine.
If you're committed to an all-JavaScript approach, then one technique is
to put all the audio in an invisible frame, and handle on/off controls
by loading appropriate webpages into that hidden frame.
jd
--
John Dowdell . Adobe Developer Support . San Francisco CA USA
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