Latest Firefox 4 beta gets trippy audio API

 

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By Nicole Kobie

Posted on 8 Sep 2010 at 10:46

Mozilla has unveiled the fifth beta of Firefox 4, including a trippy new audio visualisation tool.

New features are few and far between, as Firefox 4 nears completion. The most significant newcomer is an API that analyses the sound or creates visualisations based on the audio data held inside the HTML5 audio tag.

"With this new API, developers can read and write raw audio data within the browser, presenting audio information in completely new ways that could allow, for example, for people to visually experience a speech or a song through Firefox," said director of Firefox Mike Beltzner in a post on the Mozilla blog.

This latest beta also sets hardware acceleration to default in Windows, after its debut in the last beta. Developer Bas Schouten said Mozilla was now "confident" enough in the system, but noted the Direct2D system was only available for Windows 7 and Vista PCs with Direct X compatible hardware.

"At this point in time we do not have a system such as Direct2D available on other platforms," said Schouten in a blog post. "However we are working hard on alternative approaches to use hardware acceleration on other platforms. You should expect to hear more on that soon."

In addition, beta 5 heralds the arrival of Mozilla's HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), which lets websites ask Firefox to use a secure connection. "Firefox 4 beta now remembers what sites use the HSTS protocol and will only connect to those sites using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) in the future, helping to prevent 'man in the middle' attacks," said Beltzner.

The final version of Firefox 4 is expected to arrive in November.