HTML5 Local Storage of audio element source - is it possible?

Question

I\'ve been experimenting with the audio and local storage features of html5 of late and have run into something that has me stumped.

I\'d like to be able to cache or

Answer 1

I've been trying to do this myself, on the iOS (for iPhone / iPad) but it refuses to cache audio files in offline, even if in Cache Manifest.

It does not error, but instead simply pretends to have played the audio element if invoked via JavaScript without a control. If it's embedded with a control, it displays an alternate control that says "Cannot play audio file.". It works fine if the application is able to go online.

It seems not to cache the audio, playing another sound resource seems to cause it to clear the previous resource from memory - this is pretty worthless functionality even when online.

I have experimented with base64 encoding the audio as data URI's. This works in Safari on the desktop (at least for fairly short samples of around 20-30k that I've been using) but seems not to be supported at all on iOS - it silently does nothing, which is highly annoying.

I don't know about other vendors - Google Chrome used to not support data URI's for audio but perhaps they fixed it... - it seems like it's not possible for now though.

Update: Minor discrepancy with iPhone OS 3.x (tested with 3.1.2): If an audio element is specified in an offline web app but it doesn't have a control, it displays a non-interactive control with a non-animated spinner on it (which it definitely shouldn't do). I assume this is fixed in iOS 4.x (which should be out next week).