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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Free Flash MP3 Players and Fash Video Players

I've found a great site today and want to share my find with you. MyFlashFetish.com is a place to create free flash audio player or flash video player that can be automatically published to one of the online services including Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Blogger, LiveJournal, and many others. Great choice of skins available, easy customization, built-in search of tracks and videos and one-click adding them to playlist, saving playlists for further use - these and other useful features can be found at MyFlashFetish.com.

Comparing to desktop applications for creating flash audio and video players, MyFlashFetish.com has both advantages and shortcomings. Its advantages are: easy searching for tracks needed and adding them to playlist, easy embedding players, and free hosting for created players.
Among the shortcomings are:

• inability to upload mp3 files directly from PC. They must at first be uploaded to any free hosting where you can get their URLs for adding them to playlist;
• inability to stream online radio with these flash audio players.

Nevertheless, I seam MyFlashFetish.com to be a very useful tool for everyone who wants to create flash player for free and easily post it to the profile, blog, website, etc.

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Flash MP3 Players features comparison

Today I want to offer you a research on flash mp3 players for publishing to website. Actually, I did this research for myself when I needed to make a flash audio player for website. But I decided to share the results with the readers of my blog.

So, I've tested four flash sound players
for website: Aleo FlashMP3 Player Builder, Fun SoundPlayer Maker, Flash WAmp, and SWiSH Jukebox. I've picked them up from the list of flash music players at download.com. I've examined the following parameters:

- available player skins,

- available formats of result player file,

- availability of "button" player configuration (ON\OFF only),

- possibility of voice recording,

- availability of using audio stream (e.g. online radio),

- skin customization (what parameters of flash player design can be customized),

- playback control (what options of tracks playback user can define).

That's the results of my mini-research in short. I don't want to determine a leader – everyone has its own needs and has to choose software that would meet them the best. As you know from my previous posts, my choice was Fun SoundPlayer Maker – this flash player creator is perfect for me. I hope my table will help you to choose your perfect flash mp3 player. Try them now and choose the best! :)

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How to make a podcast or audio blog post in Blogger

Do you want your blog visitors to hear your voice? Do you need to represent your post as audio? Do you want to give your readers a choice for their convenience, so that they could either read you post or listen to it? If yes, read this post to learn how to post audio to blog.

There are two popular techniques of audio blogging – podcasting and using flash audio players. What to use – voice podcast or audio post – depends on what your aim is.

Podcasting

If you want your visitors to receive sound files through RSS feed, you should create a podcast. It can be done by adding URL(s) of your audio files as the enclosure links to your post. To do this, go to your Settings, open Formatting tab and set the "Show Link fields" option to "Yes". After adding your file as an enclosure link, you blog becomes a podcast. Now reader of your RSS will see your podcasts as a small audio player and be able to listen to your message directly in RSS reader. To get into technical details and learn how to further customize your podcast, visit Blogger Help Center. It's a great stuff for everyone who wants to send his voice posts to RSS subscribers. The only disadvantage of Blogger podcasting is that the player to hear your audio post can be seen by RSS readers only, not by usual blog readers. How to mend it?

Flash mp3 player

If you want your visitors to listen to your voice message directly in a post, the best solution for you is to embed a flash audio player to stream voice. Voice is streamed online similarly to any other mp3 files with the help of flash mp3 player. To record voice as mp3, you have to use special voice recording software or a good flash mp3 player maker. I use Fun SoundPlayer Maker software which allows to record voice, convert it to mp3 and embed to a flash audio player without using any external voice recorders. So, how to create a flash button for turning sound on/off with Fun SoundPlayer Maker and embed it into your post? All you have to do is to choose suitable player template, select an existing audio file or record a new audio post directly in the program, customize player and save it as an SWF file for further embedding into blog. Detailed instruction how to post audio player to blog and tips on creating flash mp3 players and hosting your files you can find in one of my previous posts – How to embed audio into a blog or MySpace. To let your visitors download original mp3 file directly from the post without subscribing to RSS (like podcast players do), simply host both swf player and mp3 file and assign a download link for mp3. It'll look like this.

Download mp3 file

So, it's up for you to decide what technology of posting audio to blog you need more. Or, maybe, you'd like mp3 podcast and flash mp3 player to supplement each other. My post has both embedded mp3 player and a voice podcast (you can subscribe to my RSS feed to see how it works).

P.S. Both podcasting and flash mp3 player can be used for streaming music files as well as voice recordings.

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How to embed audio into a blog or MySpace

Do you want to enhance your Blogger, Wordpress, MySpace, etc.? Do you want to add some music to your posts or profiles? Embedding music into your blog or MySpace profile is really easy with Fun SoundPlayer Maker tool. You need no special plug-ins – just an SWF sound player and its HTML code. You may ask: "Where can I get them?". This program will give them to you. So, let's go into technical details.

To embed audio into a web page, there are three steps:

1. Creating Flash sound player;
   
2. Uploading SWF player to the Web;
   
3. Inserting Flash audio player code into a web page.
   
   

Does that look difficult? Actually, it's not. All you need to create an SWF music player and its HTML code is to use Fun SoundPlayer Maker utility. It lets you create and customize web sound players and buttons with some mouse clicks. Even the worst dummy can create flash music player with its help – no programming or scripting, simply choosing a button look, selecting sound file to embed and… that's all. Yes, it's really that easy. The program gives you web ready SWF file of your audio player and a piece of HTML code. Select "Save SWF and copy an HTML code to clipboard" in publishing options.

The next step – to get a flash mp3 player working, we should upload an SWF file to the Web. When it comes to the website owners, we say – upload an SWF player to your server. But if you're a usual blogger without your own server, what should you do? I use Google sites to store my files. Go to http://sites.google.com and create your own website. That's where you can store your files. Attach the file of your flash sound player to the created website and go to your blog or MySpace profile.

That's the third step – open an HTML editor of your blog post and paste the player code from the clipboard. It will look like this.

<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0" height="34" width="84"><param name="movie" value="myplayer.swf"><param name="quality" value="high"><embed src=" myplayer.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="34" width="84"></embed></object>

Then, go to your Google site and copy the link of the attached SWF file. In Internet Explorer, simply click the file, open it with IE, and copy the link address in the address bar. In Firefox, it's easier to right click on the file, in the popup menu click "Copy Link Location", and get the link address. Paste this link into your code as a player source (replace the name of your SWF file with this link):

<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0" height="34" width="84"><param name="movie" value="myplayer.swf"><param name="quality" value="high"><embed src="
http://sites.google.com/site/yourgooglesite/Home/myplayer.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="34" width="84"></embed></object>

That's all, your audio player is successfully embedded to your blog or MySpace.

Tips: 1) Select player templates with an embedded sound source. 2) As most of the blog editors don't support JavaScript, select standard compliant markup in player publishing options. 3) While posting your player, you will see nothing in a visual post editor. You'll see only the code in an HTML editor. Don't worry, that's normal. You'll be able to test player in a post preview. 4) Make sure that your Google site is shared for public view, otherwise your blog visitors won't see you flash content.

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