Apple’s Inline Web Page Audio Player

Did you notice the little inline audio players on Apple’s iPod Shuffle web pages?

Screenshot of Apple's web page audio playback controller.

When playing, it animates with a circular progress meter:

Screenshot of Apple's web page audio playback controller.

Very cool — and very much like the iTunes song preview controller on the iPhone. Even cooler: no Flash involved. It’s QuickTime with this JavaScript to draw the animation using the HTML 5 <canvas> element. Doesn’t work in MobileSafari (yet?), but at least MobileSafari can play the audio in its usual (full-screen) way.

★ Wednesday, 11 March 2009