Playing dynamically embedded sound object via Javascript
- by Vikram Goyal
I need to background load some WAV files for an HTML page using AJAX. I use AJAX to get the details of the WAV files, then use the embed tag, and I can confirm that the files have loaded successfully because when I set autostart to true, the files play. However, I need the files to play only when the user clicks on a button (or an event is fired). The following is my code to preload these files:
function preloadMedia() {
for(var i = 0; i < testQuestions.length; i++) {
var soundEmbed = document.createElement("embed");
soundEmbed.setAttribute("src", "/media/sounds/" + testQuestions[i].mediaFile);
soundEmbed.setAttribute("hidden", true);
soundEmbed.setAttribute("id", testQuestions[i].id);
soundEmbed.setAttribute("autostart", false);
soundEmbed.setAttribute("width", 0);
soundEmbed.setAttribute("height", 0);
soundEmbed.setAttribute("enablejavascript", true);
document.body.appendChild((soundEmbed));
}
}
I use the following code to play the file (based on what sound file that user wants to play)
function soundPlay(which) {
var sounder = document.getElementById(which);
sounder.Play();
}
Something is wrong here, as none of the browsers I have tested on play the files using the code above. There are no errors, and the code just returns.
I would have left it at that (that is - I would have convinced the client to convert all WAV's to MP3 and use MooTools). But I realized that I could play the sound files, which were not dynamically embeded.
Thus, the same soundPlay function would work for a file embeded in the following manner:
<embed src="/media/sounds/hug_sw1.wav" id="sound2" width="0" heigh="0" autostart="false" enablejavascript="true"/>
anywhere within the HTML.
And it plays well in all the browsers.
Anyone have a clue on this? Is this some sort of undocumented security restriction in all the browsers? (Please remember that the files do get preloaded dynamically, as I can confirm by setting the autostart property to true - They all play).
Any help appreciated.
