Playing Audio???

[Joseph Witchard]

One of the websites I go to has it set up where you can listen to their latest podcast edition on their homepage. Can you do this with regular coding, or would you need to install special software to do that?

[donatello]

One of the websites I go to has it set up where you can listen to their latest podcast edition on their homepage. Can you do this with regular coding, or would you need to install special software to do that?
Just use the "embed" command in HTML.

Make sure you set it so that it DOES NOT start when someone opens the page. There is nothing more annoying than music starting when I open a page.

[Mr. E. Cryptic]

There is nothing more annoying than music starting when I open a page

Amen to that!

Are you trying to stream something? or just want to play a pre-recorded MP3? if the latter, you may want to look at the XSPF Web Music Player (http://musicplayer.sourceforge.net/)

[donatello]

Here is a tutorial (http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/embeddedobjects/_EMBED.html) on embedding sound files, and of course, music starts when you open the page.

Like I said in my first post, and Mr. E Cryptic concurred - MUSIC PLAYING WHEN YOU OPEN A PAGE IS VERY ANNOYING.

Someone should make a list of things that will chase people off of your website faster than tubgirl:

Music on the page that starts automatically
Popups - ESPECIALLY ones that have somehow managed to trick your popup blocker. I go right to my ranking plugin and give them a big fat ZERO (thumbs-down)
Blinking text
Marquee text
Alerts on opening the page
Alerts on mouseover, actions on mouseover when those actions are normally associated with a click (open doc, alert, navigation)
Scrollbars in addition to the ones that are on the browser. These just confuse people. We already have scrollbars and know how to use them.

...for starters...
oh, and that advert "YOU ARE THE 999,999th visitor to this page - THIS IS NO JOKE!" advert that flashes in green and yellow. Particularly annoying.

[Declan1991]

And the embed tag won't validate, so use the object tag instead (like the YouTube videos embed code).

Music on the page that starts automatically
Popups - ESPECIALLY ones that have somehow managed to trick your popup blocker. I go right to my ranking plugin and give them a big fat ZERO (thumbs-down)
Blinking text
Marquee text
Alerts on opening the page
Alerts on mouseover, actions on mouseover when those actions are normally associated with a click (open doc, alert, navigation)

I agree!

[Joseph Witchard]

I'm just wanting something that can play a prerecorded MP3 file when the user clicks the play button. Nothing too fancy.

[Mr. E. Cryptic]

try the xspf player above - if you're only looking for one available mp3 at a time then you don't even need a playlist - the mp3 can be refed in the flash code. choose the player you want from the site (the Music Player Button might suit you), upload the swf file from those files to the same directory as the page you want it on, then in your html code use;

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="485" height="116" data="xspf_player.swf?song_url=mysong.mp3&song_title=My Song">
<param name="movie" value="xspf_player.swf?song_url=mysong.mp3&song_title=My Song" />
<img src="noflash.jpg" width="488" height="116" alt="The Adobe Flash Player Plug-in is required to use this object." />
</object>

if you want to remove the right click to stop people from accessing 'download this song' the add in

<param name="menu" value="false" />

or, if you need to layer divs over the flash player then add in

<param name="wmode" value="transparent" />

the <img /> tag in the above flash will display if the visitor hasn't got flash.

[Joseph Witchard]

I'd rather not download any players/software, to be honest. Is there no way to just code it with HTML or a scripting language?

[Mr. E. Cryptic]

you can embed the music as mentioned above (like the Embed music with console part here (http://www.hypergurl.com/music.html) (near the bottom)), but it's quite ugly and the embed tag is not valid XHTML. You could also just link to your MP3 file so it open's in the user's browser when clicked (again, ugly!). There's probably some sort of client-side script that can do what you're looking for, but I don't know of any off hand.

Incidently, the xspf thing; all you need is 1 swf file that's already compleatly built and fully operational, and free. You just upload to your servers and use the flash code in your HTML (the player's quite small as well). It's probably the cleanest and simplist way you'll achieve your goal.

Saying that, wait around for a few more replies and you'll probaby get a few more alternatives.