Hello. I was thinking about a way to allow visitors to my site to listen to some mp3 tracks hosted there, and decided to go with streaming audio, but I wanted to make it compatible across all platforms, and not dependant on the user having a media player on the client side. After some Googling I decided to use Adobe Flash to do it - I know a lot of people don't like it, mainly for the accessibility issues, but I couldn't find another way to do it. I have programmed a little in PHP, and done some Java and C, but no Flash. I could not, however, find any 'from scratch' tutorials on how to do such a thing, the closest I found was on the Adobe Developer Center, but that was creating a DJ application, and did not give the user any control over the playback. Here's a brief description of what I want: A simple application in fairly stark colours with good contrast. A row of buttons along the bottom, with Play/Pause, Stop, Rewind 5 secs and Forward 5 secs. A drop down list that displays all the tracks in a particular directory and that updates itself whenever the player is loaded. A text box with a 'Browse button, so that users can either enter the path to an mp3 themselves (either on their computer or the net in general) or browse for an MP3 on their computer. A slider volume control, and a display that shows the elapsed time that updates in per second intervals. Finally, a bar at the top that identifies the file being played. From what I've seen, the scripting language for Flash seems fairly similar to PHP, as far as loops, passing variables in, etc goes. But I've never done this before and don't know where to start. I would rather do it myself with help from tutorials, etc, rather than have someone do it all for me - I want to do and learn as I go. Does anyone know of either a tutorial that covers this exact project, or can guide me to a page or something that I could follow to do this? Thanks so much. H.
Does this not assume that you have a copy of Macromedia Flash? Is there some other way you can build this?
I do have Flash installed on my system, it's part of Macromedia Studio 8. What would be great would be if visitors did not need to download any plugins or anything, for example visitors visiting from Universities or Internet Cafes may not have permission to download plugins. But I couldn't think of another way to do it. Maybe there is a way to have a 'true' distributed system operating, that is, what is needed is downloaded, with no external software needed. The audio streams to the client's computer, making use of their own sound card, but no actual player is needed on the client side. Any thoughts? H.
It would be great, however think of the problems. Allowing the internet direct access to hardware without the use of an intermediate plugin (effectively a limiter in our case) would allow even more security breaches than ever. What's to stop them from burning up your sound card by intentionally sending you continuous high frequency noises without you being able to stop it? As of right now, Flash is the most universal way to go, as it is on literally every machine now that has the internet in some shape or form. In fact, often it will automatically install for the user if they allow. Someday I wish I could just design sites that would work directly with their monitor rather than risking display issues from browser-browser. Maybe some day though
You know, I have had this very same throught, to the point where I have toyed with making a "Macromedia Flash Only" site. The idea behind it is that it would be the best chance of having the User Interface be truly nearly-identical with the same code base. Unfortunately, I think Flash is still a bit too lacking in necessary areas to be able to be used in this manner all the time (I only have Flash MX 2004 Pro...so maybe it is more flushed out in Flash 8 for this type of thing). Perhaps we will get their someday...a universal interface. One thing I do know...such an interface will never come from Microsoft. They are interested only in "embracing and extending" standards so that they cease to be standards. It will ultimately have to come from outside of them. I have high hopes for Flash, but it still has a bit of a way to go to get there. But I do hope...
Just throwing this one in you might find interesting. I use it on my myspace page (.com/villiham) and you can get it from musicplayer.sourceforge.net.
There is a really good one that you can customize called FLAM Player. They have a free version and a paid version. Personally I love it for a quick fix. A custom designed one is a different issue, but if you want an out-of-the-box Flash MP3 player that you can customize, then check it out.