Peter Lubbers - Pro HTML 5 Programming

CHAPTER 11 ■ THE FUTURE OF HTML5
privileges. The obvious application for webcams is video conferencing, but there are many other
amazing possibilities for computer vision in web applications including augmented reality and head
tracking.
Audio Data API
Programmable audio APIs will do for what did for . Prior to the canvas tag, images
on the Web were largely opaque to scripts. Image creation and manipulation had to occur on the
sidelines—namely, on the server. Now, there are tools for creating and manipulating visual media based
on the canvas element. Similarly, audio data APIs will enable music creation in HTML5 applications.
This will help round out the content-creation capabilities available to web applications and move us
closer to a self-hosting world of tools to create media on and for the Web. Imagine editing audio on the
Web without having to leave the browser.
Simple playback of sounds can be done with the element. However, any application that
manipulates, analyzes, or generates sound on the fly needs a lower-level API. Text-to-speech, speech-tospeech,
synthesizers, and music visualization aren’t possible without access to audio data.
We can expect the standard audio API to work well with microphone input from the data element as
well as files included with audio tags. With and an audio data API, you may be able to make an
HTML5 application that allows users to record and edit sound from within a page. Audio clips will be
able to be stored in local browser storage and reused and combined with canvas-based editing tools.
Presently, Mozilla has an experimental implementation available in nightly builds. The Mozilla
audio data API could act as a starting point for standard cross-browser audio programming capabilities.
Video Improvements
Earlier in this book, we described in detail the current capabilities of the element. While there is
still no required video codec specified in HTML5, Google recently released WebM, a high-quality,
royalty-free video codec for the Web. Although not all vendors have agreed to support WebM yet, there is
significant momentum behind the format.
Additionally, there is increased demand for improvements in the current controls for HTML5 video.
In order to fully replace plugin-based rendering of video, HTML’s own control will need to introduce
better APIs for streaming. Expect this capability to evolve in the next iterations of the media tags; with
increased adoption of devices without Flash playback, such as the Apple iPad and iPhone, there is a
significant incentive to bring Web video to a large audience with only HTML5.
Touchscreen Device Events
As Web access shifts ever more from desktops and laptops to mobile phones and tablets, HTML5 is also
continuing to adapt with changes in interaction handling. When Apple introduced the iPhone, it also
introduced into its browser a set of special events that could be used to handle multitouch inputs and
device rotation. Although these events have not yet been standardized, they are being picked up by other
vendors of mobile devices. Learning them today will allow you to optimize your web applications for the
most popular devices now.
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