Last weekend, I rolled out a new version of media.io that features the following changes:

500 MB Upload Limit

I’ve raised the upload limit to 500 MB from 250 MB.

Support for MP2

media.io now supports the MP2 format so you can convert MP2 to MP3 online.

Other Bug Fixes

• In very rare cases, an error in Groovy would prevent conversions. This has been fixed.
• Support for invalid range request headers. Some buggy clients send indices in range request headers in the wrong order. This is now supported.

Since the last update, I haven’t added any new functionality but instead concentrated on getting bugs out of media.io. I now have a system in place that helps me finding problems with browsers quickly and the outcome of this is that the following bugs were identified and fixed.

• Bugfix for missing Content-Length header during upload. Some clients do not tell the server how long the upload they’re sending is. This is now working fine.
• Bugfix for changes in Internet Explorer 9’s CSS opacity handling. In IE 9, Microsoft has removed the older filter CSS property to change the opacity of elements. The impact of not implementing this soon enough was that few IE 9 users were able to use the site (those using the compatibility view were not affected, I think).
• Bugfix for files with + in their names. Files containing + in their names could not be downloaded. Thanks to mrzerga for reporting this.
• Bugfix for file not found errors in Internet Explorer 8. Some bugs only affect users of certain browsers which can cause them to go unnoticed for long. Sadly, downloads of files with spaces in them (in other words, most files) never worked in Internet Explorer 8 due to a combination of IE’s HTML mangling and my hope that certain things would work the same across browsers. This bug affected a lot of people and made them unhappy, judging from the survey responses.
• Enhancement: No more ActiveXControls in IE 7 and greater. Internet Explorer has implemented a native XMLHttpRequest object from IE 7 on. This is now used in preference over the MSXML ActiveX control the XMLHttpRequest API originated from. This means that, even if your computer administrator has disabled ActiveX controls, you can still use media.io.
• Enhancement: Better conversion page for mobile phones. The conversion page for cellphones is now almost the same as the regular conversion page for desktop browsers.

There you have it. Enjoy using media.io to convert MP3 files!

Correct Download File Names

A bug that existed since… the beginning of media.io: When you downloaded a file that contained non-ISO-8859-1 characters (technically speaking), you would get broken file names. To be honest, I never noticed until someone from Russia told me. Crazy.

Faster Downloads

To make downloading faster, I implemented gzip compression for downloads. In April, this reduced the amount of downloaded data by 13 %. Less data to download means faster downloads for you (and less money if you are billed by bandwidth consumption).

MIDI

media.io now supports the popular MIDI format so you can for example convert MIDI to WAV.

media.io in Estonian

Thanks to Olav from Estonia, there is now an Estonian translation of media.io. Thanks, Olav!

Other performance improvements

I’ve made several small tweaks to increase site performance. The home page should now load in less than 2 seconds – worldwide.

It’s been a busy start into 2011 for me. Here are the things that are new at media.io:

Extended Version

media.io now has an Extended Version (formerly pro accounts) that lets you convert multiple files and also upload larger files (500 MB right now, up from 250 MB). For now, the price is only 1 €. Access to the Extended Version is valid for 24 h.

Bug Fixes

Since the last update, the following problems were corrected:

• Some browsers send full file paths. Paths are now removed.
• Question marks in file names were not removed. Question marks in file names that might have been caused by downloading files are now removed.
• Advertising performance improvements. Google’s AdSense product has traditionally been slow and getting slower almost by the minute. With two little tricks, I was able to reduce the bandwidth of AdSense by about 50 %, leading to faster loading pages.
• Many mobile browser bugfixes. Many modifications to the mobile audio conversion page and the home page ensure that even low-end mobile browsers can now use media.io.
• More debugging data for me. While this will not impact visitors, better logging helps me better understand what formats work well and which ones don’t. This has also been reflected in the privacy policy
• Underscores in file names were not removed. Occasionally, people try to convert audio files that end on “_,” such as “foo.mp3_” These underscores are now removed.

New Audio Formats

media.io now supports wave files which are simple WAV files with a different file name.

I’ve published a new version of media.io today that has several new features.

New Features

• You can send anyone a link to download a file you’ve converted. Many people suggested I add this. The download link is valid for 30 minutes.
• After downloading your converted audio files, you can start over. This way, files you have already downloaded will not show up again. Again, I’ve been asked to do this.
• You can see which file extensions are supported, in addition to the maximum file size. This was something that might have annoyed one or two people so I implemented it.
• There are now buttons to link to media.io If you have a site and would like to promote media.io, I’ve prepared some banners for you. Enjoy.

GUI Changes

In addition to these new features, I have implemented one or two subtle changes to the GUI. It’s now all white, as well as having Verdana as the body font which I find more legible than Arial. As usual, you will find screenshots of media.io “before” and “after” below.

Bug Fix

One thing I’m very excited about is a seemingly tiny problem I found a while ago and that I solved the same day. Fixing this bug has decreased audio conversion error rates by absolute 2.76 %, relative 38.48 %. For five lines of code changes, this is awesome.

As always, I hope you enjoy converting MP3 to WAV online and all the other file formats at media.io.

(download)

Click here to download:

New_features_new_GUI_and_now_e.zip (56 KB)

That is all, enjoy :-)

• “Download Links” are no more. From my conversion rates, I noticed that people didn’t seem to understand what the download links were meant to do so this feature is gone.
• Fixed download encoding issues. @Warin notified me of a problem when downloading files with certain characters in the file name. This might have been a big problem that’s now resolved.
• Impromptu instead of Thickbox. The venerable ThickBox has been replaced by the newer Impromptu that’s at least as good, if not better.

Coming Soon

I’ve also changed one or two things here and there, as evidenced by the screenshots below. And there are more changes in the works (yes, including support for WebKit and mobile browsers). As always, if you have questions or need a feature when converting audio online, please let me know.

(download)

Click here to download:

media.io_updates_and_bugfixes.zip (74 KB)

Bugs, bugs, bugs

Software bugs are annoying so I fixed some more.

• Repeatedly uploading files would not work in Internet Explorer. This was a caching issue.
• Don’t log file names during download. Nobody seemed to care about this bug but it was easy to fix for the next version of media.io.

Time for tests!

It’s no secret I love testing. I’m a bad designer and a bad copywriter, but I don’t have to be good because I can let my users tell me what they like. In the next days, I’ll start another multivariate test that should answer some of my questions regarding button and help text placement.

Survey

I would like to find out how you use media.io and I have created a short survey. If you have 30 seconds, please take the survey. Thank you!

New upload layout

I mentioned that people are occasionally uploading files but never converting them. In response to that, I’ve completely redesigned the file upload. You can see it in the screenshot below. Soon, when you convert audio at media.io, it’ll be painfully obvious how much data you’ve already uploaded.