Web Audio testing tools for the Chrome OS team

Google

Collaborated with the ChromeOS team to build a Web Audio API testing tool.

In 2011 the Chrome OS team was implementing audio drivers for the Chrome Book based on the Web Audio API. The Chrome team engaged Bocoup to build a web application to exercise the full surface area of the Web Audio API so they could test their hardware configurations and web platform implementation.

Challenge

At the time of this work, no one had yet built any software against the Web Audio API new web standard. We were working with the Web Audio Working Group at the W3C to harmonize Mozilla's element based Audio Data API with Google's node based Web Audio API, which we know today as the standard. The Chrome team needed some software to fully exercise the API in an interactive way during development.

Solution

We engaged with the Chrome team to build a stand alone web application for audio driver engineers to use while they worked. Much of the specified behavior was not yet implemented, so this work involved a great deal of specification parsing, and informed guess work for the initial code. We then worked together with the Chrome team as new features landed to iterate on our tool, and their implementation, toward correct behavior.

Impact

Today the Web Audio API ships in all major web browsers and is used to power a set of complex application which had not been possible prior to this work.

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Mail

P.O. Box 961436
Boston, MA 02196