Link copied to clipboard
By Fred Sauer, Developer AdvocateCross-posted with the Google Web Toolkit BlogLast week
Angry Birds for Chrome was updated to use the Web Audio API for all its in-game audio for Chrome users, which means Chrome users get the full Angry Birds experience, without any plugins. The
Web Audio API supports a wide variety of
use cases, including the high fidelity and low latency requirements of games. Users of other supported browsers will still get sound via Flash or HTML5 audio.
How does this cross-browser audio magic work? As you may have
seen or heard, Angry Birds was in no small part made possible by the cross-platform open source
PlayN library. When building for the HTML platform, PlayN in turn relies heavily on
Google Web Toolkit (GWT) to delivery a highly optimized web experience for users, and on
gwt-voices to easily deliver a cross-browser audio experience.
The responsibility of choosing the appropriate audio API for the game's sound is (mostly) left up to gwt-voices, which chooses the audio API that will give the best experience. If you'd like to hear how other audio APIs perform, you can ask gwt-voices to try to use the
Web Audio API,
Flash,
HTML5 Audio, or even
native audio. Your mileage will vary by browser and platform and which plugins you have installed. Also, gwt-voices will select the best available fallback, if the desired audio API is not going to work at all in your environment.
Want to learn more? Check out the
Web Audio API tutorial and don't let
those pigs grunt too much.
Fred Sauer is a Developer Advocate at Google where most of his time is devoted to Google App Engine and Google Web Toolkit. He is the author of various GWT related open source projects including gwt-dnd (providing in browser Drag and Drop capabilities), gwt-log (an advanced logging framework) and gwt-voices (for cross browser sound support). Fred has dedicated much of his career to Java related development, with an increasing focus on HTML5.Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor
