5 golden rules for using audio on the web

Sound on the web. I know. Historically, these two things haven't gone together very well. Most of us have been burned when visiting a site whose creator has deemed, most probably as an afterthought, that a background bed of awful electro-jazz would be an excellent way to enhance the mood. Fortunately, it doesn't have to be this way. We can do things differently.

When people talk about native versus web apps, audio never gets a mention. Yet it is this element that helps the UI of many native apps excel over their web counterparts. Take the camera app on a phone, for example. How do we know when a photo has been taken? You'll most likely see some sort of flash on screen to indicate that an image has been captured, but it's usually backed-up with the sound of an emulated mechanical click of a camera's shutter. What about Twitter's famous "pull to refresh" control? Would it be as satisfying if it didn't have that little 'pop' when you let go?

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