Google has updated the stable release of the Chrome browser with support for the Web Speech API. This API will be useful for web developers wishing to add speech recognition capabilities to their web apps. Another new audio feature, present in early builds of the Chrome browser in testing, shows users which tabs have sound playing within them.
Web Speech API
The latest stable version of the Google Chrome browser includes speech recognition capabilities. Google announced it via the Chrome blog late last week “Web apps, listen up. Today's Chrome Stable release includes support for the Web Speech API (discussed last month), which developers can use to integrate speech recognition capabilities into their web apps. To see what this might look like, check out this demo on how to compose an email just using your voice.”
Voice control and speech recognition often sounds a lot better in theory than it works in practice. My own little test of the feature showed that it doesn’t even know its own name... I repeatedly said “I am testing the Web Speech API – comma – it doesn’t work very well.” It always had problems with the word “speech”, wanting to use the word “page” instead, though sometimes it got “API” correct.
“I am testing the Web Speech API – comma – it doesn’t work very well.”
The latest Chrome 25 stable release also disables silent extension installs in Chrome for Windows, this ensures you give consent to every extension installed and “keeps Chrome fast and safe”.
Noisy tab indicators
Google is working on audio notification icons on Chrome browser tab-tops which are playing or recording audio. These alerts could be useful for a number of reasons:
- To help users hunt down annoying streaming adverts among their many open tabs.
Or conversely
- To keep open music streaming tabs you don’t want to close by accident, or to exclude these open tabs from those Chrome automatically discards when memory runs out.
TNW reports that the audio tab indicators are in the “Canary build” of Google Chrome and the notification appears if sound is playing via a variety of methods including Flash or HTML5. The notification is a little animated bar type “VU meter”.
