hearthePeople

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by johnnysaucepn

V2.0 Jul 3, 2006 5:25:04 AM

Now goes beyond just podcasts!

An audio-playing and browsing widget - snaps to the sides of your screen for convenient use.

- Add your existing podcast feeds
- Search for podcast series or episodes (includes quick picks for common topics!)
- Search internet playlists
- Search for individual MP3 tracks
- Load your own XSPF-format playlists or MP3 file URLS.

Bookmark your favourite audio feeds for later, saved automatically.

New in version 2.0 - includes searches for music playlists and tracks, courtesy of WebJay and Blogdigger, more configuration options, multiple colour skins and optional opacity, and an automatic version-check - always stay up-to-date! The Flash component is now fully integrated into the widget, and works with Flash 7 or above. Manually entered feeds now correctly retrieve their own name automatically.

Two warnings - podcast feeds other than MP3 are not supported, and the Flash component currently used cannot handle variable bit-rate MP3s correctly. If your podcast starts to sound like it's being read by chipmunks, please try another!

Player component from http://musicplayer.sourceforge.net

Comments 34 posts

« Previous 21 - 34 of 34

Awesome!

Would love to see optional snapping features in other widgets too! =]

By Ejrech , # Jul 16, 2006 4:56:45 AM

Will it be possible to enter a url to an mp3 and the widget would play it? It'd be a nice addition

By shoust , # Jul 15, 2006 12:10:51 AM

, I realised quite soon that I really should have a loading indicator, but didn't have enough time to implement it, let alone space in the UI to fit it! It'll make it into a later version, I promise!

By johnnysaucepn , # Jul 6, 2006 9:42:46 AM

TreeGo, it's not the widget causing chipmunking, it's your encoding preference. Try 128 or lower. The flash player thats being used just doesn't play nice with your encoding.

I guess I don't know where this encoding preference exists. Some podcasts work fine as is, too. Thank you.

I came across this, but I am not recording anything for podcasting ... just trying to hear the podcasts. Do I have to contact the persons responsible for the podcasts to get this corrected, then?

By TreeGo , # Jul 6, 2006 7:00:27 AM

Hmm, how long should one wait? I've tried selecting various feeds and have waited quite a while, but it just stays at the blue screen. A status or progress indicator would be nice.

I like the window docking.

By tinhoy , # Jul 6, 2006 1:47:53 AM

TreeGo, it's not the widget causing chipmunking, it's your encoding preference. Try 128 or lower. The flash player thats being used just doesn't play nice with your encoding.

How would one go about doing that?

By rmccabe916 , # Jul 6, 2006 1:18:43 AM

TreeGo, it's not the widget causing chipmunking, it's your encoding preference. Try 128 or lower. The flash player thats being used just doesn't play nice with your encoding.

By bestdamntech , # Jul 5, 2006 7:25:05 PM

Brilliant!!!!!!!!!

By bestdamntech , # Jul 5, 2006 7:13:37 PM

This is impressive! Very nice johnnysuacepn!

By Think , # Jul 5, 2006 8:58:14 AM

Excellent widget. Here are many podcasts about music.

http://magnatune.com/podcasts/

By fanel , # Jul 5, 2006 5:11:58 AM

Yeah, I'm going to keep looking at alternatives for playing. I don't know if the problem's with the MP3 decoding facilities of Flash itself, but I certainly know there's better looking playlists out there.

I did find one that looks nice and works well, but has horrible transparency issues when used as a widget...

By johnnysaucepn , # Jul 3, 2006 11:55:48 PM

Yes ... most of my podcasts are chipmunks, it seems, with this widget. Nice concept, though.

Here's my podcasts that are chipmunked:

http://www.kfuo.org/podcast/LG.xml
http://www.str.org/podcast/weekly/rss.xml
http://feeds.feedburner.com/wayofthemaster

By TreeGo , # Jul 3, 2006 11:35:09 PM

Wow! I cannot tell you how much I like using this widget. You must have put a lot of work into it to get everything to work well. I did notice however that the arrows to scroll up and down through the different podcast series. I don't know how to replicate the problem, but a reload usually helps. Also, how much load does the player put on your server? Hopefully not too much so we can keep listening when the widget becomes really popular ( I know it will!

) Oh, and the chipmunk sounding feeds are really funny too.

By rmccabe916 , # Jul 3, 2006 7:32:14 PM

Please be patient if it takes a little while to connect... The process of getting the MP3 to play is quite involved. For those of you interested in the technicalities:

The Flash component needs to be hosted on an external website to be able to access the playlist file it requires without security errors, so it exists on my personal web server, not in the widget package.

Secondly, it demands a playlist URL in XSPF format, so I had to write a Python server-side script to convert from either a single file (for the episode search) or a full RSS feed into a XSPF playlist, and pass the URL for that into the Flash.

I also had to jump through a few hoops to get it to switch between 'tabs' without stopping the sound - as soon as the Flash is 'display:none' or 'visibility:hidden', it stops automatically, and 'opacity:0.0' has no effect on Flash. In the end, it actually resizes itself very small and hides underneath the widget, while still playing!

Let me know how successful these solutions are.

Opera Software ASA

hearthePeople

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