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…And this time, no bugs! You are now able to use external variables in a text file with your players, to replace the long strings of variables in you html. One file can be used with however many players you need. Just replace the paragraph or two of ‘www.mydomain.com/xspf_player.swf?playlist_url=playlist.xml&alphabetiz e=true&autoplay=1′ etc. with ‘www.mydomain.com/xspf_player.swf?loadurl=variables.txt’, Using ‘loadurl’ as your sole variable. This finishes my planned work for the XSPF, but I still have a lot to do. I’m deciding on whether to build a skin formatter, for users to create their own layouts, or new downloadable versions with different looks, or both. See it here.
The playlist creator is now open-source and up for download. For those looking into the scripting side of flash, this is a good example of flash forms and text manipulation.
Updates everywhere. I’ve been doing some server cleaning. First off is that the documentation for the XSPF player has been updated for the first time in months. Next comes the player creator. It has been updated a few times in a few days, but I believe it will stay this way for a while. Lastly is player updates; The request for a start_track with shuffle has been filled, and works perfectly. Also, for the more technical of us, I have included a way to collect stats about your player usage through an external php file (or any language that can read POST variables). This is a dumbed down version of the player I created for IACMusic.com. It can collect the label (title and artist) for each track, as well as the annotation. The script can be customized to include such things as a date, referrer, and ip address. I’ve included some of these options in an included script. This data can be used however one wishes (for IAC, it was written to a text file, and processed into a database later on). The final player updates were pointed out to me by the ever-watchful eye of Lucas Gonze. These are XSPF validation errors. The trackList node needs a capitol ‘L’, the playlist should be in ‘.xspf’ format, and there is no such thing as a ‘type’ node in XSPF. This has been changed to meta rel=”http://lacymorrow.com/type/” to follow validation. Finally, ‘music’ is does not follow XSPF format. This has been changed to ‘audio’ (under the meta node). See it here.
Three updates. On the extended player, video playback has been fixed. On the slim, custom variables were not available, this has been fixed. And for both, a bug that showed ‘undefined’ has been corrected. http://blog.lacymorrow.com/projects/xspf-wmp/
After hours of testing and retesting the external variables loading for the player, I have not been able to come up with a way to fix the problem that makes the player stop after finishing a song. If anyone has any suggestions, they would help greatly. It is a problem with the ‘onEnterFrame’ function that checks if the variables are loaded. The last thing on my list of things to try is a load handler. The only way to fix the problem though, is to not have a loadurl. The playlist creator has been adjusted accordingly. http://blog.lacymorrow.com/projects/playlist-creator/
Slight Viewr update, fixes the fact that it wasn’t working correctly, as well as implementing a new loading listener for smoother transitions, especially for those with slower browsers.
http://blog.lacymorrow.com/projects/viewr/
Xspf 4.4 fixes the autoload issue where it loads double playlists, or will not autoload. Also fixes the disregarding of autoplay=false and autoload=false inputs. Get it Here.
So many people were having trouble getting playlists and the players to work, and the lack of good documentation did not help. I have created a small playlist and html generator for the Xspf Player. This generates a playlist file, a variables.txt, the deconcept SwfObject javascript file, and your html code to embed. This also breaks the IE ‘Active Content Update’, so no more, “click on the movie to activate” bubbles. Just download the player, fill in your info in the generator, and anyone can have a music player in under ten minutes. Use it Here.
This update (4.3 & 3.1) should hopefully fix all the loading problems many of you have been having. Even loading using an external variables file. I’m wary to say it, because of the thousands of emails I got about previous problems, but send me a message or comment if you have problems.
See/Get it Here.
There are two problems I am working to fix with the xspf players. The first is the external loading method, apperantly users are experiancing problems in IE (not suprising), and IE does not allow the used external loading method for variables. The only fix to this is to not load using an external file. Add variables in your html to the end of your player source. ex: “http://www.yourdomain/xspf.swf?autoload=1&playlist_url=playlist.xml” etc. The other problem is in the use of id3 tags in the mini player, they do not always work in IE. Both problems are being fixed.
I have been getting some emails from people finding “suspicious Mochibot code” in my flash files. Mochibot code is non-invasive and is used JUST as a tracker for my flash projects, it shows me where and how many times my videos have been played. I would apreciate it if developers would leave the code standing, but if needed, I have no problem with any removal of it.