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Of course, at ofmlabs we all want sink.js to be made unnecessary as soon as possible! It's just a pragmatic solution when you want to make an audio demo and can

Of course, at ofmlabs we all want sink.js to be made unnecessary as soon as possible! It's just a pragmatic solution when you want to make an audio demo and cannot wait 3 years for the browser implementors to reconcile :) In the long term, we have been participating in the W3C Audio WG, and discussing with various folks at Google and Mozilla, to try and understand where the debate is going. Robert O'Callahan's MediaStream API seems the most promising so far. We are not advocating the use of sink.js as a long term solution!

TomOfTTB 15y ago
I have no criticisms for sink.js my comment was more on the philosophical side. The danger in a solution like sink.js is it becomes "good enough" until people need more than it can provide. Then they turn to the APIs and end up dealing with fragmentation. If you think about it that's exactly what happened with IE circa Version 5. The one good thing IE did was make it possible to develop for one browser. What the industry should have done then was what they're doing with HTML5 now. Define a standard so other competitors could enter the market without creating fragmentation. But that's not what happened and now everyone has to write for 3 browsers (if not more thanks to IE7,8,and 9) Same with sink.js. For all the bad in Flash almost everyone has it and it's a consistent thing you can write to. If people use sink.js now and don't pay attention to the fragmented APIs underneath we'll end up having to write to 3 different APIs down the line. So again I'm not against sink.js. I'm just saying people using it need to realize exactly what you said and pressure browsers for a common API in the long run.
- BrendanEich 15y ago
  You're right about IE5 (then 6) stagnating, but the predicate there was Microsoft's OS monopoly and browser tying. No such condition today -- we have a much more competitive browser market, and no browser can afford to self-stagnate. Roc says he is nearly done with MediaStreams and if that looks good to enough people on the standards bodies, or really among the browser implementors, then it'll go forward.

TomOfTTB 15y ago

I have no criticisms for sink.js my comment was more on the philosophical side. The danger in a solution like sink.js is it becomes "good enough" until people need more than it can provide. Then they turn to the APIs and end up dealing with fragmentation. If you think about it that's exactly what happened with IE circa Version 5. The one good thing IE did was make it possible to develop for one browser. What the industry should have done then was what they're doing with HTML5 now. Define a standard so other competitors could enter the market without creating fragmentation. But that's not what happened and now everyone has to write for 3 browsers (if not more thanks to IE7,8,and 9) Same with sink.js. For all the bad in Flash almost everyone has it and it's a consistent thing you can write to. If people use sink.js now and don't pay attention to the fragmented APIs underneath we'll end up having to write to 3 different APIs down the line. So again I'm not against sink.js. I'm just saying people using it need to realize exactly what you said and pressure browsers for a common API in the long run.

BrendanEich 15y ago
You're right about IE5 (then 6) stagnating, but the predicate there was Microsoft's OS monopoly and browser tying. No such condition today -- we have a much more competitive browser market, and no browser can afford to self-stagnate. Roc says he is nearly done with MediaStreams and if that looks good to enough people on the standards bodies, or really among the browser implementors, then it'll go forward.