#1: Embed MP3 Player in browser

Contents

1. Motivation
2. Assumptions
3. Proposal
4. Implementation
5. Deliverables
6. Risks
7. Progress log
8. Participants

Proposed by

Nate Aune

Proposal type

User interface

Assigned to release

• ATAudio 0.5.3 (Alpha release)

Repository branch

trunk

State

completed

Motivation

I want to make it as easy as possible for users to listen to the ATAudio tracks, and currently it requires some effort on their part to have configured their browsers and media players to handle the .m3u streaming files that ATAudio generates.

While this isn't a problem for most users, I suspect that it would be more user-friendly to give the user an option of playing the audio file directly in the browser.

Assumptions

I am assuming that the user has a sufficiently modern browser and either a native way to play audio files, or a 3rd party plugin to do so (Quicktime, Flash, RealAudio, Windows Media, etc.)

Proposal

We need to modify the templates on which the 'Stream' button appears and include the embedded player instead. We should still allow for the option to stream the file in an external media player, since some users prefer to use the software with which they are already familiar.

Implementation

I suggest that we implement this Flash embedded music player (http://musicplayer.sourceforge.net/). It would be good to also include support for Quicktime, RealAudio, Windows Media.

Look at the Webjay Wizard for examples on how to make the playlists in the correct format for each particular media player. http://www.smoothouse.org/smoothouse/webjay.asp

Deliverables

The Flash file, a script for generating a playlist that the Flash file can read, and the modified templates which now include the embedded Flash player.

Risks

We'll need to have some sort of graceful fallback for users who do not have Flash installed on their computer. This may already be a part of the Flash spec. But we'll need to do some checking anyways, to know which player to show. Perhaps the user can set a cookie specifying what his preferred media player is. John Tynan submitted some code to handle this.

Progress log

2004-10-15: We have a basic play button implement on the audio_view page. The next step is to put it on the audiofolder_view template, and use the full Music Player which will display all the tracks in the ATAudioFolder. This advanced Flash player can also display the album art and lets the user jump forward and backwards through the playlist.

Participants

Nate Aune
Salim Fadhley
Volodymyr Cherepanyak
Rocky Burt