How to record voice in the client-side without Flash?

Question

We need to capture voice in a web portal. Our contractor developed the whole web portal without using Java Applications, only client-side code, and claims there is no way to capture voice using JavaScript today.

I'm not a Java guy, so I don't have the skills to discuss this, but I'll appreciate any help our folks here in SO can give: if you guys say it can not be done with today technology, so be it...

PS: the solution MUST attend IE, Chrome, Firefox and Safari, for end users, so Canary is out of question for now.

Answer 1

Currently there's no way reliable way to record audio using only HTML5 and JavaScript across browsers.

The only cross browser solution for non Flash recording on desktop browsers in the foreseeable future is the Media Recorder API. It's a recent standard proposal for a JS API who's purpose is to make audio and video recording in the browser very simple. Today it works only in Firefox 27 and only for audio. This article covers the standard in more detail.

If audio recording is important for you today I recommend you check out proven flash solutions like FLVAR or Audior. They work on all browsers, they are reliable and supported. Flash just works and major sites like YouTube and Netflix continue to use it.

Answer 2

The javascript's getUserMedia (getUserMedia on MDN) is a simple way to do this. I suggest you addyosmani's polyfill that has a flash fallback in case the browser doesn't yet support it.