Table of Contents for
The Modern Web

Version ebook / Retour

Cover image for bash Cookbook, 2nd Edition The Modern Web by Peter Gasston Published by No Starch Press, 2013
  1. The Modern Web
  2. Cover
  3. The Modern Web
  4. Advance Praise for
  5. Praise for Peter Gasston’s
  6. Dedication
  7. About the Author
  8. About the Technical Reviewer
  9. Acknowledgments
  10. Introduction
  11. The Device Landscape
  12. The Multi-screen World
  13. Context: What We Don’t Know
  14. What You’ll Learn
  15. A. Further Reading
  16. 1. The Web Platform
  17. A Quick Note About Terminology
  18. Who You Are and What You Need to Know
  19. Getting Our Terms Straight
  20. The Real HTML5
  21. CSS3 and Beyond
  22. Browser Support
  23. Test and Test and Test Some More
  24. Summary
  25. B. Further Reading
  26. 2. Structure and Semantics
  27. New Elements in HTML5
  28. WAI-ARIA
  29. The Importance of Semantic Markup
  30. Microformats
  31. RDFa
  32. Microdata
  33. Data Attributes
  34. Web Components: The Future of Markup?
  35. Summary
  36. C. Further Reading
  37. 3. Device-Responsive CSS
  38. Media Queries
  39. Media Queries in JavaScript
  40. Adaptive vs. Responsive Web Design
  41. Viewport-Relative Length Units
  42. Responsive Design and Replaced Objects
  43. Summary
  44. D. Further Reading
  45. 4. New Approaches to CSS Layouts
  46. Multi-columns
  47. Flexbox
  48. Grid Layout
  49. The Further Future
  50. Summary
  51. E. Further Reading
  52. 5. Modern JavaScript
  53. New in JavaScript
  54. JavaScript Libraries
  55. Polyfills and Shims
  56. Testing and Debugging
  57. Summary
  58. F. Further Reading
  59. 6. Device Apis
  60. Geolocation
  61. Orientation
  62. Fullscreen
  63. Vibration
  64. Battery Status
  65. Network Information
  66. Camera and Microphone
  67. Web Storage
  68. Drag and Drop
  69. Interacting with Files
  70. Mozilla’s Firefox OS and WebAPIs
  71. PhoneGap and Native Wrappers
  72. Summary
  73. G. Further Reading
  74. 7. Images and Graphics
  75. Comparing Vectors and Bitmaps
  76. Scalable Vector Graphics
  77. The canvas Element
  78. When to Choose SVG or Canvas
  79. Summary
  80. H. Further Reading
  81. 8. New Forms
  82. New Input Types
  83. New Attributes
  84. Datalists
  85. On-Screen Controls and Widgets
  86. Displaying Information to the User
  87. Client-side Form Validation
  88. The Constraint Validation API
  89. Forms and CSS
  90. Summary
  91. I. Further Reading
  92. 9. Multimedia
  93. The Media Elements
  94. Media Fragments
  95. The Media API
  96. Media Events
  97. Advanced Media Interaction
  98. Summary
  99. J. Further Reading
  100. 10. Web Apps
  101. Web Apps
  102. Hybrid Apps
  103. TV Apps
  104. Webinos
  105. Application Cache
  106. Summary
  107. K. Further Reading
  108. 11. The Future
  109. Web Components
  110. The Future of CSS
  111. Summary
  112. L. Further Reading
  113. M. Browser Support as of March 2013
  114. The Browsers in Question
  115. Enabling Experimental Features
  116. Chapter 1: The Web Platform
  117. Chapter 2: Structure and Semantics
  118. Chapter 3: Device-Responsive CSS
  119. Chapter 4: New Approaches to CSS Layouts
  120. Chapter 5: Modern JavaScript
  121. Chapter 6: Device APIs
  122. Chapter 7: Images and Graphics
  123. Chapter 8: New Forms
  124. Chapter 9: Multimedia
  125. Chapter 10: Web Apps
  126. Chapter 11: The Future
  127. N. Further Reading
  128. Introduction
  129. Chapter 1: The Web Platform
  130. Chapter 2: Structure and Semantics
  131. Chapter 3: Device-Responsive CSS
  132. Chapter 4: New Approaches to CSS Layouts
  133. Chapter 5: Modern JavaScript
  134. Chapter 6: Device APIs
  135. Chapter 7: Images and Graphics
  136. Chapter 8: New Forms
  137. Chapter 9: Multimedia
  138. Chapter 10: Web Apps
  139. Chapter 11: The Future
  140. Index
  141. About the Author
  142. Copyright

Advanced Media Interaction

Just the two media elements (plus their associated API) that you’ve seen so far in this chapter provide many more options for media than developers have ever had in the past, but this is only the beginning. Plans are already underway to provide far more granular control and extensibility to playing media natively in the browser, with advanced audio capabilities and peer-to-peer data connection acting as the vanguard.

Web Audio API

For people who want to go beyond simple playback of audio files, an emerging standard called the Web Audio API aims to provide high-level processing and synthesizing of audio in web applications. The Web Audio API is based on the concept of Audio Routes, a common tool in sound engineering (but way over my head!).

Like the canvas element, the Web Audio API uses a context, which is constructed with the AudioContext() method:

var context = new AudioContext();

Going further on this subject is far beyond the scope of this book, and my own capabilities, but if you’re interested in advanced audio processing, I suggest you read the article “Web Audio API – Getting Started” on the CreativeJS site (see Appendix J).

WebRTC

Back in Chapter 6, we looked at the getUserMedia() method. There, I mentioned that it’s part of the wider WebRTC project. WebRTC is an exciting proposal aimed at allowing all web-connected devices to communicate with each other, using audio, video, and data in real-time and using a single standardized protocol.

At the moment, many tools do this, but all of them require plug-ins or extra software, and very few actually use the same protocol and are able to talk to each other, creating a series of “walled gardens” with no way to get data from one to the other. WebRTC aims to remove those walls.

WebRTC has three key APIs: MediaStream gives access to data streams such as from a camera or microphone (using getUserMedia()), PeerConnection allows voice or video communication between devices, and DataChannel is for generic data communication. As I write this, Chrome and Firefox have experimental support for all three, and Opera supports MediaStream through getUserMedia().

As with so much of the media landscape on the Web, however, even the current WebRTC specification has an uncertain future. An alternative specification, CU-RTC-Web, has been proposed by Microsoft based on their experience of owning the Skype platform. Going into detail on either of the two specs is very probably a fool’s errand, so I’ll leave it at this: Real-time communication will come to the Web, even if the precise shape it takes is not currently known.