HTML5 Audio Safari Extension
I subscribe to a number of blogs that post audio files on a regular basis (like composer of Battlestar Galactica and The Walking Dead, Bear McCreary and a number of game music sites). Connor McKay’s YouTube5 Safari extension addresses most videos I encounter and “Open in Google Chrome” works for the rest but while video might demand attention, audio is ambient. It doesn’t makes sense to keep a second browser open just for background noise but I couldn’t find a similar extension for audio. So I made one. HTML5 Audio Safari extension replaces a number of Flash-based audio players with the HTML5 audio element. I’m not taking requests for additional players—I’ll be improving support as my needs dictate—but if you, fellow savvy developer, add support for additional players, let me know and I’ll drop it in (credited, of course).
Supports Tumblr.
UPDATE:
Loving this.
Between this and the ClickToFlash extension, I’m quite close to a non-Flash Tumblr experience.
Related: Has anyone written an all HTML5/non-Flash Tumblr theme?
I really don’t get why all these sites that have special iPhone versions can’t give everyone an HTML5 player.
Marc Hoyois, author of the ClickToFlash Safari extension during an e-mail exchange today.
Related: Has anyone written an all HTML5/non-Flash Tumblr theme?
Has anyone written an all HTML5/non-Flash Tumblr theme?
One that plays all media —- audio, photos, and video —- via HTML5 tags instead of through Flash wrappers?
Audio/MP3 posts, for example, are simply embedded in Flash wrappers/players that could just as well be played via QuickTime/HTML5 using native controls.
Audio posts play fine on the iPhone using QuickTime, so they’re obviously playable without Flash.
Multiple-photo posts are displayed within a slideshow wrapper on the desktop, but are just displayed natively as a list of photos on the iPhone.
And can’t a theme be written to show an h.264/MP4 embedded video when available instead of a Flash version?
Of course, the theme can fall back to Flash players/wrappers if native versions of content are not available/parseable, i.e. a Flash-only embedded video or audio stream.
Thoughts?
Thanks in advance.
MPEG LA: H.264 codec license is free forever
MPEG LA announced today that its AVC Patent Portfolio License will continue not to charge royalties for Internet Video that is free to end users (known as “Internet Broadcast AVC Video”) during the entire life of this License.
Read the entire release here.
Safari Users: Install the ClickToFlash plug-in, maintain sanity
I can’t say enough about the ClickToFlash plug-in for Safari/WebKit-based browsers.
ClickToFlash is a WebKit plug-in that prevents automatic loading of Adobe Flash content. If you want to see the content, you can opt-in by clicking on it or adding an entire site to the whitelist.
We all know Flash is a resource hog. This cuts Safari’s CPU usage dramatically.
ADDED BONUS in the latest version: Toggle the setting to ‘Load H.264 videos from YouTube’. Doing so will automatically load H.264/MP4-formatted YouTube clips (when available) and play them using the Apple QuickTime plug-in. It is ridiculous to see side by side how much smoother these clips play using QuickTime vs. Flash.
Mega Flash FAIL.
