Thai-English Dictionary Online - Now with Sound

[ThaiNotes]

A few years ago I developed an online Thai-English-Thai dictionary which lets you look up individual words, or all the words in a passage, or browse the dictionary alphabetically.

Anyway, I've now added sound clips for most (but not all) of the Thai and English words. To play the clip, just click on the "loud speaker" symbol whenever it appears.

The dictionary's new location is http://thai-notes.com/dictionaries/predictionary.shtml

It's also available through the menu at http://thai-notes.com/

Do let me know if you've got any feedback you'd care to offer. Always appreciated.

Notes:

(1) Sound is not currently working in Safari. I'm not yet sure why.

(2) Internet Explorer 6 is no longer supported.

[Lannig]

Seems like a really useful tool! congratulations and thanks

I'll get back to this topic if I have feedback but in the meantime I really wished to thank you for the effort.

(don't bother with Safari... after all it's only used by the lowest life forms who use Macs <== Joke alert for the humor-impaired reader, not a troll )

[ThaiNotes]

In a moment of madness I wrote that sound was not working with Safari. That should have read "Opera". Anyway the problem is now (I hope) fixed, and sound should work (where available) on any mainstream, modern browser. Technical explanation below for those who are interested in that sort of thing.

Technical Explanation

Most browsers have built-in support for .mp3 files, which is the format I used for the audio clips. Some sites dedicated to browser compatibility suggest that Opera supports .mp3. However, it doesn't. It relies upon the operating system to play .mp3 files. Firefox is actually the same. On my computer Opera can't play .mp3 files, though Firefox, which should have the same problem, can.

The solution was to provide the audio clips in both .mp3 format and .ogg (Ogg Vorbis) format. Whilst I was aware of Ogg Vorbis, this is the first time I've had to have anything to do with it. The first tool I used to convert .mp3 to .ogg - dir2ogg - should be renamed "dir2chipmunk". The output .ogg files were, to put it politely, useless. ffmpeg, however, did the job.

Now, with both file formats available, the browser will chose whichever one it is able natively to handle.