Chapter 5. Media Plugins: Audio Plugins

Media plugins play a huge and a much more important role in today's highly digitalized world. How many times can Internet addicts open up their web browser, read some pages, and not stumble on some interesting pictures that promptly catch their eyes?

And what about videos? Short, sometimes funny, videos are all over the network. Everybody happens to, sooner or later, click on the play button and check what one of these intriguing short movies is all about.

The same happens to audio files. The use of songs, and sounds in general, on web pages is spreading very quickly. Many websites offering streaming capabilities are seeing the light, resulting in more and more users being given the opportunity to listen to some music online.

Also, sounds can be included on web pages to provide music samples, in a totally different fashion than the streaming-oriented websites have made us used to.

Thinking about a page with a tiny music player is enough to get the idea of what we're going to end up with, right after we have solved some common problems plugin developers usually face when dealing with the topic of media plugins, following a somewhat individual approach.

Specifically speaking, this chapter will discuss the following: