Fallback HTML5 audio tags for a simple MP3 podcast are harder than you'd think

The HTML5 Audio tag is wonderful, right? Just works. This is the dream:

You can try that live at http://jsfiddle.net/CdxbX/ if you like.

Except it's not nearly that easy.

Here's what you'll see on IE9+:

Here's Chrome:

Here's Firefox, version 19:

Ya, Firefox currently doesn't support MP3 audio so it just flashes once then disappears. Firefox will support MP3s in audio soon though by using the underlying operating system to play the stream rather than its own embedded code.

In Firefox 20 (the beta channel) on Windows 7 and above, you can test MP3 Audio support by turning on the preference media.windows-media-foundation.enabled in about:config.

The part I was disappointed in was more of an HTML5 specification issue. Notice that while I have fallback text present, I don't see it in Firefox. That's because fallback elements are only used if your browser doesn't support the audio tag at all.

It doesn't do what I would expect at all. What I want is "Can you support any of these audio sources? No? Fallback." This seems intuitive to me.

I talked to Chris Double via Christian Heilmann at Mozilla and he said "You'd need to raise the issue with WHATWG/W3C. It's been debated before in the past. " Indeed it has. From Oct 2009, more people saying that it's not intuitive to fall back in this way:

I expected (incorrectly, in this case) that if I only produced one source element (an MP4), Firefox would drop down to use the fallback content, as it does if I include an object element for a format not supported (for example, if I include a QuickTime object and QT is not installed, the user sees fallback content). As far as I can see, the only option in this situation is to rely on Javascript and the video element's canPlayType() function. - Kit Grose

This lack of an intuitive fallback means that I can't make an audio player that works everywhere using just HTML. I have to use JavaScript, which is a bummer for such a fundamental scenario.

Getting HTML5 audio to fall back correctly in all browsers

Instead you have to make an audio tag dynamically, then interrogate the tag. This applies to both audio and video tags. I ended up using some code from my friend Matt Coneybeare.

The AudioPlayer.embed at the end there is the WordPress AudioPlayer in standalone form. This way on Firefox I get the flash player since it answered false to canPlayType.

A Responsive and Touch-Friendly Audio Player in HTML5

However, the default audio player made by the

This plugin, along with a little CSS styling of its default colors gives me a nice audio player that looks the same and works everywhere. Except Firefox 19/20 until the next version Firefox answers true to "canPlayType" and then it should just start working! Until then, it's the Flash fallback player, which works nicely as well.

The other problem is the QuickTime plugin that most Firefox users have installed. When styling with the Osvaldas' AudioPlayer, the JavaScript interrogation would cause Firefox will prompt folks to install it in some cases if it's not there, and it still doesn't work if it is installed.

I ended up modifying Matt's detection a little to work with this Osvaldas' styling. I realize the code could be more dynamic with less elements, but this was easier for me to read.

• First, try the audio tag. Works? Great, style it with audioPlayer();
• Can't do MP3 audio? Dynamically make a Flash player with that P. Hide the audio player (likely not needed.)

Unfortunately for readability, there's the ".audioPlayer" jQuery plugin that styles the HTML and there's the "AudioPlayer" flash embed. They are different but named the same. I didn't change them. ;)

All in all, it works pretty well so far.

ODD BUG: Chrome does seem to have some kind of hang where this audio player is getting blocked while the comments load on my site. Any JavaScript experts want to weight in? If you load a page - like this one - and hit play before the page is loaded, the audio doesn't play. This only happens in Chrome. Thoughts?

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