How to Create Flash MP3 Player of WinAmp Skin

In spite of emerging lots of mp3 players software, Winamp still remains the classic of media players. Thousands of skins add to its brilliant features ability to change player's appearance to anyone's liking. It's great to have such options for web audio players too. And we've got the possibility to do it with neat FlashWAmp tool.

FlashWAmp is so easy to use - all you need is Winamp skin you like and mp3 tracks you want to embed to the web page. Or you can even use URLs of mp3 files to stream them directly from the web.

Options to customize player in FlashWAmp are rather numerous:

  • Player view - normal or small with or without playlist
  • Sound options (autoplay, repeat sound)
  • Playlist options (playlist height, option to change visible playlist).
Settings can be saved to cookies for further use.



The tool has lots of advantages and the main is that it really allows to make flash audio player of WinAmp skin in minutes. Then the player is saved as SWF file and can be easily published to the Web. But it's necessary to mention its disadvantages as well:
  • audio can't be embedded into the player, it is external only. That is not very good for bloggers who can't create folders on the hosts to store player file, mp3 files and playlist file in one folder
  • the program is compatible with Winamp 2.x skins only. Still, these skins are easy to find - for example, here.
Summary:
I think that the idea to make flash audio players of Winamp skins is brilliant. Not only because there are thousands of skins of any kind, but also because Winamp is familiar to everyone. Sometimes I see mp3 web players of so weird design, that I don't even know where to click to make this futuristic device play. Moreover, I can understand that this is a web music player only when I see playlist. I never want to make my website visitors guess whether this stuff play music, or open game, or what on the earth it can do. I want them just see the player and enjoy the music. Familiar Winamp interface will simplify listening to the music from your web page, even for dummies. That's why I like FlashWAmp.

So, try and create your own Web Winamp FlashWAmp player :)

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PdfMeNot - convert PDF to SWF online (and free)

PdfMeNot is a very helpful service to view PDF documents online using Adobe Flash Player. In other words, PdfMeNot converts PDF into SWF file (online and free!) and you can save this SWF for further use (Go to Tools > Page Info > Media > select and save .swf file).

PdfMeNot also offers:

1. Easy linking to existing PDF files. Simply add http://pdfmenot.com/view/
before the URL of PDF file (e.g. http://pdfmenot.com/view/http://example.com/example.pdf) to view .pdf as SWF movie and save it if needed.

2. Bookmarklet and Firefox add-on: they do the same - convert pdf links on a web page so that they can be viewed with PdfMeNot (i.e. automatically adds the link I mentioned above to all pdf links on the page). The difference is that installed Firefox addon do that automatically for every page you visit, while bookmarklet lets to convert links only when you need it. The converted links will be marked with a small icon.

3. Javascript for bloggers and webmasters for converting PDFs they link to.

4. PDF viewer which can be inserted into a webpage.

Go to pdfmenot.com for more details.

PdfMeNot is a great tool for viewing PDF files everywhere even without Adobe Reader or Foxit Reader. Nevertheless, take note that it's PDF Viewer only, result SWF files don't have Print or Search options.

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