4 ms·

Why is Flash still a requirement?

by hamoid 14y ago

pwenzel 14y ago
IIRC, Flash is not required, but provides a fallback for those browsers and devices that do not fully support HTML5 audio.
- hamoid 14y ago
  Trying to find out which browsers support what audio features I found this site: http://caniuse.com/audio http://caniuse.com/audio It links to a sound file-format test, where I see Firefox plays only ogg and wav. That made me wonder if one could do mp3 decoding on the browser. It's possible: http://labs.official.fm/codecs/ http://labs.official.fm/codecs/ but it sounds totally broken on Firefox on my Ubuntu. So no Flashless SoundCloud on my Firefox yet, but it may soon change: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=799318 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=799318
  - dpetrov 14y ago
    The playback problems with the JS decoder are due to bugs in some versions of Firefox for Linux. Those have been recently fixed (as of 19.02a as far as I can tell). See: https://github.com/ofmlabs/aurora.js/issues/13 https://github.com/ofmlabs/aurora.js/issues/13
- rplnt 14y ago
  According to hamoid's link my browser has had HTML5 Audio support for almost three years. Yet when I enable plugin on demand, soundcloud (old or new) doesn't work and I have to enable flash. That's Opera. Firefox doesn't work either as was already mentioned. Every html5 audio test I've found worked just fine. Except for Apple's, because it, similary to soundcloud, sniffs user-agent to serve different version of a site.
  - gryzzly 14y ago
    There is no MP3 support in Opera.
    - rplnt 14y ago
      Ah, that would make more sense, thanks for pointing that out. Although it's sad that "we" went for expensive Mp3 again when we had a chance to change it. And by "we" I mean chrome. Firefox held a strong stance for quite some time, but had to cave in eventually.
stroebjo 14y ago
If you have an account you can opt in a experimental HTML5 player in the settings [0]. I'm using it now for a while, works like a charm. [0]: http://soundcloud.com/settings/extra http://soundcloud.com/settings/extra
doublerebel 14y ago
In addition to the HTML5 audio, there are many apps that consume the SoundCloud API. Once I find what I like, I play it with soundCLI [1], but there are many desktop and mobile apps that work outside of SoundCloud's website [2]. Also, you can Chrome to Phone a SoundCloud URL from your desktop and if you have an Android app that reacts to those URLs it will offer to open it. [1] https://github.com/rekado/soundCLI https://github.com/rekado/soundCLI [2] http://soundcloud.com/apps/category/discover-listen http://soundcloud.com/apps/category/discover-listen

Why is Flash still a requirement?

by hamoid 14y ago

Why is Flash still a requirement?

IIRC, Flash is not required, but provides a fallback for those browsers and devices that do not fully support HTML5 audio.

hamoid 14y ago
Trying to find out which browsers support what audio features I found this site: http://caniuse.com/audio http://caniuse.com/audio It links to a sound file-format test, where I see Firefox plays only ogg and wav. That made me wonder if one could do mp3 decoding on the browser. It's possible: http://labs.official.fm/codecs/ http://labs.official.fm/codecs/ but it sounds totally broken on Firefox on my Ubuntu. So no Flashless SoundCloud on my Firefox yet, but it may soon change: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=799318 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=799318
- dpetrov 14y ago
  The playback problems with the JS decoder are due to bugs in some versions of Firefox for Linux. Those have been recently fixed (as of 19.02a as far as I can tell). See: https://github.com/ofmlabs/aurora.js/issues/13 https://github.com/ofmlabs/aurora.js/issues/13
rplnt 14y ago
According to hamoid's link my browser has had HTML5 Audio support for almost three years. Yet when I enable plugin on demand, soundcloud (old or new) doesn't work and I have to enable flash. That's Opera. Firefox doesn't work either as was already mentioned. Every html5 audio test I've found worked just fine. Except for Apple's, because it, similary to soundcloud, sniffs user-agent to serve different version of a site.
- gryzzly 14y ago
  There is no MP3 support in Opera.
  - rplnt 14y ago
    Ah, that would make more sense, thanks for pointing that out. Although it's sad that "we" went for expensive Mp3 again when we had a chance to change it. And by "we" I mean chrome. Firefox held a strong stance for quite some time, but had to cave in eventually.

stroebjo 14y ago

If you have an account you can opt in a experimental HTML5 player in the settings [0]. I'm using it now for a while, works like a charm. [0]: http://soundcloud.com/settings/extra http://soundcloud.com/settings/extra

doublerebel 14y ago

In addition to the HTML5 audio, there are many apps that consume the SoundCloud API. Once I find what I like, I play it with soundCLI [1], but there are many desktop and mobile apps that work outside of SoundCloud's website [2]. Also, you can Chrome to Phone a SoundCloud URL from your desktop and if you have an Android app that reacts to those URLs it will offer to open it. [1] https://github.com/rekado/soundCLI https://github.com/rekado/soundCLI [2] http://soundcloud.com/apps/category/discover-listen http://soundcloud.com/apps/category/discover-listen