yeah, this is weird.

this is an example of my control:

<audio autoplay controls style="width:500px;height:50px" id="Player">
<source id=flac src="../inri - inrisampled - 02 war.flac" type='audio/flac; codecs="flac"'>
<source id=mp3 src="../inri - inrisampled - 02 war.mp3" type='audio/mpeg; codecs="mp3"'>
<source id=aac src="../inri - inrisampled - 02 war.m4a" type='audio/mp4'>
<source id=wav src="../inri - inrisampled - 02 war.wav" type='audio/wav'>
<source id=ogg src="../inri - inrisampled - 02 war.ogg" type='audio/ogg; codecs="vorbis"'>
</audio>

the controls work for all five types on firefox in windows, and for the last four types on chrome in the chrome os. i don't see any logical reason why flac breaks when mp3 doesn't, other than that chrome doesn't like being told to use that codec. so, i think that's more of a chrome-specific thing.

i want it to work, though....

i'm not even going to test on...they call ie "edge" now, right? whatever.

the fourth major browser is safari, and i don't have an apple device, so i don't do any testing with anything to do with apple - no apple lossless, no safari, none of it, because i just don't have access to it. sorry...

so, i can test with firefox and with chrome, on windows and on the chrome os, giving me four possible testing scenarios.

i'm going to then argue it's irrational to run firefox on the chrome os and rule out that possibility. so, the last thing i can try is the chrome browser in windows, and i do use chrome on the 90s laptop, because it's too old to launch a version of firefox that is new enough to run html5, which you now need for youtube. they forced me into it, basically. 

i just did a search to make sure i'm not missing anything, and firefox' share has sure declined recently, although it's actually safari's share that seems to have gone strangely up. chrome has been at 65% for a while, now - i'm not surprised by that. but, how did safari get to 25%? i thought iphones were losing badly to android? double-checked - yup. are apple pcs up, then? no, they're down. ??. so, how can safari have a 25% market share if the iphone is at 15% and apple pcs are at 10%?

the last version of safari for windows was in 2013, and you would bizarrely need to run it via wine to use it on linux, according to a cursory google search.

but, you can install safari on android devices. so, i guess that a lot of people have switched from iphone to android, but don't want to let go of safari just yet? even so, the numbers are still weird.

it may be closer to the truth that firefox' decline is tied more to the general decline of the desktop/laptop and it's increasing replacement with phones. it may be less that people are moving away from firefox, and more that people are moving away from computers altogether.

i'm going to continue to resist this, and when i do finally move past firefox, it's going to be to some kind of fork. i could end up migrating to linux, and using a linux fork of firefox. i don't know what's still kicking, it's been a long time.

i've just had issues with chrome being particularly invasive, in terms of spyware. i had it installed for a while, years ago, but i kept finding it dialing home, and every time i turned it off, it would install itself back into the startup menu. it was acting like a virus, basically, and i don't have a lot of patience for aggressive corporate spyware like that. so, i ripped it right out of my machine, and i've avoided it ever since. i don't intend to go back to it....

but, i should check to see how this thing behaves on the 90s laptop, first. if...does it even have flac codecs at all?

if it was funny over aac or ogg, i wouldn't mind so much, but i expect people to download in flac, so i want this to work on the chromebook. in the world of windows and linux, flac is the default lossless audio codec.