Greg Newby wrote:

On Sun, Aug 09, 2009 at 09:04:25PM +0200, Marcello Perathoner wrote:

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David A. Desrosiers wrote:

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If you're looking at it at that level, why not just offer some streaming audio of the books as well? What's the advantage of streaming audio vs. getting the whole file at once?

Listening while downloading. This seems to happen for some people, but not others.

Many players can play while downloading from a file. Firefox on Linux starts "reading" within 3 seconds of clicking on a 30 Megs mp3. Streaming has its only advantage if you don't have enough disc to store the file on the device or if you use multicast protocols, both of which we can rule out for PG.

I don't know whether differences are in content-type, the server, or somewhere else, but a frequent email Q sent to help@ is, "I clicked your MP3, and I got a message that it downloaded. Where is it, and how to I listen?" In that case, the browser downloaded the file without opening it in a player.

I get the opposite question, too: "I clicked your MP3 and it played, but now I want to save it to my computer to transfer to my MP3 player."

This entirely depends on the settings of the browser. The server only sends a header: "content-type: audio/ogg" and the browser decides what to do with it. Somebody ought to write an illustrated how-to for users, explaining how to config their browser for immediate playback on left-click and how to use right-click/save-as for saving to disc.

I don't know enough about the mix of protocols, server settings, browsers, players, etc. to know whether there is a single solution. But from our reader/listener's point of view, I think two links per audiobook file (MP3, OGG, etc.) would be desirable:

a. Listen now (streaming) b. Download for later

This *may* work using the non-standard "content-disposition" header, which different browsers implement in slightly different ways ... so then we'll have a swimming-pool of snakes.