Re: [BLUG] Music for Naught: My first attempt at a non-school programming project

Whoops... Reading your blog post I can see that you're already hip to jPlayer. Sorry!

I do like the whole directory browsing thing, that is an interesting and useful feature :)

Joe Auty May 7, 2011 4:19 PM

Hey Ben!

Congrats on this project!

Have you considered about an HTML5 version of this? My favorite player is jPlayer (http://jplayer.org/), because it supports making your own HTML5 player for browsers that support this, as well as a Flash fallback for those that don't. The Flash fallback does not require the UI to be assembled in the Flash SDK, the buttons are all HTML/CSS/Javascript in both HTML5/Flash playback modes.

As a web developer, unless you are deeply entrenched in Flash (I'm not), not having to skin a player inside Flash simply being able to use HTML/CSS is definitely a plus. This site is a work-in-progress, but here is an implementation of jPlayer with my own tweaks and customizations:

http://musicromm.netmusician.org


I'm not suggesting that you make a jPlayer clone, but leaving the reliance on Flash to a minimum I think would be a plus. As you know, one obvious reason for this is that your player will not work on iOS devices at all, and from what I understand Flash kind of sucks balls on Android devices too in terms of its performance/battery strain.

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Ben Shewmaker May 7, 2011 2:51 PM

Hi everybody,

Between classes, I was attempting to teach myself some PHP this last
semester, and to test out my skills, I've been working on a simple
(actually, really really simple) little web based music player
(perhaps browser is a better term) project off and on. I think I've
finally reached a point where it is usable and so have uploaded the
project for others to poke around at. If anyone is interested, I'd
love some feedback on the little project as a whole, or, especially,
any comments on the code. What things did I do totally stupidly?
What things work but could be more efficient? What things don't work
at all? There's still so much I don't know so having others poke
around at my code (I hope) will give me some ideas on where/how to
improve.

I've only tested it on one server and so have no idea if it will work
at all on other systems and configurations. You can get more
info/download/view a demo here:
http://www.shewbox.org/music-for-naught/

Thanks!

Ben Shewmaker

p.s. I kinda suck at CSS, so it looks rather bad in IE. It looks
fine in Chrome, Firefox and Safari (haven't tried it in Opera yet).
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Joe Auty, NetMusician
NetMusician helps musicians, bands and artists create beautiful, professional, custom designed, career-essential websites that are easy to maintain and to integrate with popular social networks.
www.netmusician.org
joe@netmusician.org