Angry Birds Chrome now uses the Web Audio API
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
