Playing a sound with flash

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi Guys

I am writing a chatlike application with Ruby on Rails. I have come across the problem that I need to subtly alert a user that a comment has been made in the case where the user has minimised the browser, or it is not in focus.

I am using Juggernaut to handle the posting back to the browser and it works fine (generally - have had some hiccups though - it hangs on Windows it seems). As Juggernaut requires the user to have flash installed I would think that the best way to get a beep playing would be to get flash to play the sound.

Unfortunately I dont have much (any, to be honest) experience with flash. Has anyone ever had a similar problem and solved it?

(It seems that most of the literature I found on playing sound with Rails recommends Apple's Quicktime - as I am already requiring my users to have flash enabled for Juggernaut I'd like to avoid asking them to also install Quicktime)

You thoughts (and examples especially!) will be appreciated

Pieter Hugo South Africa

2

Since you are just sending back javascript code, you can use scriptaculous sound (or some other javascript sound library) to play a sound. No need to send it using flash, just load it as part of the javascript you’re initializing on the page. No need for Quicktime at all.

Best regards

Peter De Berdt