How to Use the Multi-Track Project Creation Configure Step

The screen allows you to choose setting for how your audio will play (play modes), change the dimensions of your player, and personalize and add help text that appears when a listener clicks the small (?) icon on the actual player.

Instructions:

1. Play Modes:

The streaming option is recommended for all circumstances. The website jukebox players are designed with a special algorithm which will buffer, progressively download, and play the audio file and simulate streaming playing the audio without interruption starting in ten seconds or less over any internet connection including dialup.

This allows you to reach any audience with your message regardless of their connection speed. For this reason it is important that you use the optimal audio sample and bit rate for online streaming which is 22khz 24 bit or lower.

If you choose to turn the streaming option off just be aware that this will tell the player to download the entire audio file before it will play.

You have a choice between two top level play modes:

One Track Mode and All Tracks Mode . If you were to select One Track Mode and the loop setting the player would be told to play the first track of your presentation and loop it. If you were to select All Tracks Mode and the loop setting the player would play from track to track and loop back to the first track after all the tracks were played.

Auto Play means that the player will play automatically upon the visitor landing on the page. If you wanted a site to have some music playing in the back ground while a visitor was on The site you might set it to auto play and loop .

Even when you set a player to autoplay a visitor would be able to stop the audio by pressing the stop or pause button on the player. Use auto play sparingly usually in situations where your visitor is prepared or expecting to hear the audio.

One of the most powerful ways to use auto play in a multi track presentation is to turn off loop and select one track mode . This way the player will play the first track in your presentation and stop to wait for the visitor to decide what action to take next.

This can be very useful for a welcome message or giving preliminary instruction explaining what the visitor should do next and then letting them decide on the action. If you have more tracks in the player you can tell them how you would like them to use those tracks, how to navigate them and then let them browse the tracks etc.

Auto Load is a setting that tells the player to begin downloading the audio upon the arrival of the visitor at the site. If you use auto load without auto play the audio will be qued up and ready to play when the visitor presses the play button.

2. Tool tips

The show tips option simply enables the tool tips that will show when your visitor hovers their cursor over the player control buttons. These tool tips will tell them what the button does like pause, play, stop, and give them important tips on using the fast forward, rewind, and track navigation buttons.

3. Html page output formats

The enable JavaScript output option will let you choose whether to generate a JavaScript include and an external to embed the audio into the html page or if you turn off this option your output will default to the traditional embedded object method. Due to a recent lawsuit that Microsoft lost they were forced to disable all embedded flash objects by default when they are viewed in the Internet Explorer browser.

By using the JavaScript output your players will be immunized against this update and work as if Microsoft had not sent the active x update out. JavaScript is also the preferred method if you wish to host your player and supporting files remotely and have it appear on a page such as an eBay auction.

You can learn more about the Eolas patent lawsuit, the Microsoft IE disabling active x update, how it may effect your websites, and get a tool to instantly fix any of your flash banners, video players, and older audio presentations that do not already use the external JavaScript include to immunize against it visiting www.fastobjectfix.com

Website Jukebox is one of the few solutions that has the fix built in. For a high quality flash video solution that has the fix built in I recommend FLV Producer

Special Feature: Every once in a while you may have a website visitor who does not have javascript enabled in their browser. This is very rare and usually only the most savvy geeks will turn it off. The good news is that in the code we use for our players we include what is called a <noscript> tag. This means that if you use the javascript option for embedding your media and a visitor does not have javascript enabled the <noscript> tag in the code output by Website Jukebox will tell the page to display the audio player using the traditional object code. This way even on the rare occasion that a visitor does not have javascript enabled they will still see and be able to access your audio player.

4. Movie Dimensions

This should say player dimensions:

...but until I update that label movie dimensions refers to the width and height of the audio player in pixels. You can change the dimensions of the player by clicking in the boxes net to the words width or height and changing the numbers.

When changing dimensions of players take into consideration that especially when it comes to multi-track players I do not recommend reducing their size. Increasing their size seems to turn out all right. You will notice there is a little x between the dimensions and if you hover over it with your cursor it will say "click to keep to scale." If you click this you can change the dimensions for the pixels or width and the other will be calculated to retain the proper dimensions.

You can use the set to default button to return the dimensions to their standard specs.

5. Help note:

The help note box will allow you to enter information that will be displayed when your website visitor clicks the question mark (?) icon that is part of the interface on most of the multi-track players.

The usable space varies for each player so make sure when you enter info into the help note, to save your project and preview it and click on the ? to make sure your message fully displays. If it gets cut off you will need to shorten the message. The player that offers the most space for a help note to be displayed is player that displays scrollable play lists in a fairly large display.

I recommend using the help note info for reminder instructions on what you want the visitor to do like "use the play button on the audio player to listen to a message" etc. In addition to text the help section will accept limited html tags like changing the color of the text and inserting simple text links which can come in handy.

6. Save Projects:

Don't forget to save your project. After you finish putting your audio presentation together you will need to click the "save projects." The great thing about saving your project is that you can do this at any time and even open up the software and do a search for the folder you saved to and open your project up and edit it.

7. Multiple project management

One of the options in the top row of buttons is Manage Projects . After you have completed a project and saved it you can find it listed on the Manage Projects screen by clicking on the Manage Projects button.

This handy function was designed to let you create and manage several projects simultaneously. When you press the save projects button in order to save your progress on a project you were working on or in order to save a completed project it will save and output all the projects you have open. Each project is saved with an html page and supporting files like the player and any external javascript files that are named and numbered so that you can recognize them. For example if you only have one project the html output page would be index0.html and if you have two the secondary output html page would be index1.html and so forth.

One of the uses for multiple project management is so that you would have the code for each player and audio presentation that you create on its own individual html output page. This way you can quickly copy that line of code and paste it into an index page that will appear on your site which you are generating the audio presentations for in order to place them in it by pasting the audio player embedding code whether it be a JavaScript include or object tag.

To add a new project simply click on the manage projects button and when on the manage projects screen click add project . Next you will see a new project appear that will be numbered in the order following your other projects. You can then take your mouse and click on the new project in the list to highlight it. Next click on Manage tracks . This will take you to the add tracks screen and you will be starting a new project from scratch. When you click save projects each project will be output with its own individual html page and other supporting files which will be saved to the folder you chose or created for saving to in step 1 of the software.

Each of the files will be named and numbered so that you can differentiate and so that they do not get overwritten by each other . When you wish to make a change to files you previously saved as a project you just open the existing project > make your edits or changes in the website jukebox software > and press save projects this will save any changes you have made to the project and overwrite the previous output.

You can update and change projects whenever you want as long as you keep all the supporting files in a folder and open that folder with website jukebox to work on an existing project. The config.dat file must be present in the project folder that you are attempting to open and edit.

We personally use the open existing project function to update the online archives or our AM radio talk show. All we have to do is open the project folder and add the audio file to the presentation and save our project and it is done. I then upload the supporting files such as the new audio track and xml page to the server and the track is automatically added to the list of tracks available for visitors to listen to.

Once projects are saved and ready to put on your webpage you simply open the html page for each project which will be named player_0.html player_1.html etc in your html editor or in a text editor and view the html source code.

For projects using javascript output you will copy from the <script> tag to the </noscript> tag and paste that code exactly where you want the player to appear.

For projects using html output without javascript you will copy from the <object> tag to the </object> tag.

I explain more about the difference between javascript and html output on the help page for the screen.

Once you have pasted the code for all your players in the html page where you want them to appear you simply upload all the supporting files to the web in the same directory (folder) as the html page where you want the players to appear.

Remember that all the supporting files must be in the same directory as the page you are pasting the player into in order for it to display correctly... unless you change the urls in the code to absolute so that they may call remote file