Wednesday, April 12, 2006

It's time to give Firefox an audio mixer.

The title says it all, it is time to give Firefox an audio mixer.

The web is becoming increasingly more multimedia. While the bulk of web content is still text, and will likely remain text for a long time to come; multimedia is here to stay. The curent state of multimedia on the web is painful, particularly on sites such as MySpace where opening a single page could result in several movies or MP3s playing at once... not to mention the chaos that can happen with for those of us that are addicted to browser tabs.

All audio played from a plugin should be passed to the browser's audio mixer. The browser should have a variety of mixing controls including:
  • global mute and volume
  • per-tab mute and volume
  • automatic volume adjustments based on focused tab status
  • volume and mute controls per embedded object
  • automatic volume adjustments for embedded objects in view status
Plugins should be given an api to the mixer. There is likely a way to mask older plugins to some kind of virtual device. If so, Firefox could add this functionality without making updates to any plugins.

Such an API could also be accessable via javascript, giving AJAX the power to have sound events or stream audio. Then things will get really fun.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I totally agree with the above idea. I like to play online games while watching tv shows and it's annoying when some games don't have a mute button.

Anonymous said...

This would be AWESOME. Frankly, just a mute button would be good enough for me.

Anonymous said...

YES!!! this is what I need!
How do we get it to happen??

Anonymous said...

Totally agree I want a mute button, that would make me happy.

Anonymous said...

I also totally agree an audio mixer would be great. I reckon it should be able to be a sidebar too, as well as all the functions Zaskoda posted.

Anyone write extensions? Or know someone who can?

I'd put actual money into a bounty to get an audio mixer. Is there a place to list bounties anyone?

Anonymous said...

Yes, please. On regular media players you can increase the volume by using the equalizer, however webcasts do not have this option. The sound on my laptop is way to soft for most webcasts

Anonymous said...

That would be a great feature for firefox! I would really like to be able to control the sound of tabs individually and select which one I want to hear and which not.

Anonymous said...

cojonudo! quiero uno ya!

Anonymous said...

awesome idea.... been thinking the same thing for some time... so, thought id google it to see what came up. nice to see others likewise had the same thoughts. unfortunately... as this post is 3 years old, i dont think anything became of this author's edit.