WP Audio Player – my plugin for easily embedding audio in your WordPress posts (and the first plugin I’ve ever open sourced on GitHub) just received a major update.
Though can read all about the updates on the plugin homepage, I thought I’d share some of the updates that went into this particular release, specifically from a developer’s perspective.
Notes For WP Audio Player 1.4
The challenges that came with updating the plugin to its current version revolved largely around the audio element, browser inconsistencies, and adding some enhancements to the user’s experience in WordPress.
The audio Element
As it stands right now, the audio element isn’t supported across all of the major browsers. Furthermore, in some browsers, such as Firefox, the MP3 codec is not supported.
This presented the problem of needing to introduce a fallback.
The standard embed player when the audio element or MP3′s are not supported.
Since not not all browser yet support the audio element, the plugin does the best it can to determine if it should fall back to a normal embed element.
If so, it will display the embed element and will then display a message as to why the responsive player doesn’t display.
Furthermore, I’ve made no effort to support anything earlier than IE10. Because of the fallback aspects of the plugin and because I want to do what I can to move the web forward, I’ve decided that – at least for this plugin – nothing earlier than IE9 will be supported.
Updates To The Dashboard
In addition to improve the cases where a user attempts to embed a file that resides on another domain, I’ve also introduced the ability for users to select MP3′s that exist in their media library.
The updated dashboard listing MP3′s in the media player.
Simply click on the file in the available list and then save your post. Clear the text box if you opt to remove the player.
I definitely thing there’s room for improvement in the usability, but since this is a free plugin and I strive for iterative development, I figure that this is one step forward.
What’s Coming?
Because the project is available on GitHub, you can easily see the features that are planned and the issues that others are having.
If you’re a developer, feel free to commit; if you’re a user, feel free to try it out and file any issues that you may see.
At any rate, this update is relatively large in terms of what it offers to end users both site visitors and site administrators. Dig any and all feedback!
The selection from the media library doesn’t work but instead the name of the media lowest on the list becomes part of the URL of the permalink. How can this be fixed?
This sounds like a bug. What browser is this happening in, for you? I’ll make a note of it and see what I can do for a release soon.
In the meantime, you’ll need manually grab the URL from the Media Library.
Thanks for the heads up!
I use Firefox on the Mac
Noted – I’ll be taking a look at this as soon as I get a chance.
I believe I’ve just encountered a bug. Sorry if this isn’t the best place to report it. It fit the description of someone’s experience here: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/blog-excerpts-on-sidebar-are-all-the-same
thanks!
Happy to take a look!
This is odd but this doesn’t seem to work on PC’s (Internet Explorer). Looks and works great on Safari. Any ideas?
What version of IE are you seeing the problems?
On lakewooducc.org, a website I maintain, people have been having problems playing mp3 files from links (in the browser and not downloading). The problem is that, if they have a bad internet connection, the file will stop playing at some point. I installed your plugin and it works great, but the same connectivity issues exist for them even with your player.
Is there a way to increase the size of the buffer on your player so when they’re streaming the file it’ll get them past any funky connectivity?
If you want to see an example, here’s the most recent post with an audio file: http://lakewooducc.org/2013/02/20/an-apple-a-day-podcast/
Many thanks for your plugin. It’s very attractive, especially in Chrome!
Hilton,
Thanks for the link – makes diagnosing the problem much easier for me.
So the bad news is that there’s not much I can do about the buffering right now. I’ll take a look at it and see if there’s anything I can do in the future, but this is largely at the mercy of a number of factors that are out of a developer’s control.
That said, I do listen to all the feedback and do what I can to make these plugins the best I can
.
I’ve been using your plugin for a few months now, and just noticed a problem with the new update. Trying to access the audio on posts from a mobile web browser makes it so the audio player doesn’t even appear. With older versions of the plugin, the audio player would be there and perfectly useable. Any work around for this? Thanks!
Currently there is not as it should work on all mobile devices. Looks like you may have found a bug – yikes
.
If you can provide me with some additional information, I’ll see if I can’t provide a fix soon:
What browser are you using?
What device are you using?
Let me know – apologies for the inconvenience.
I’m using the newest release of the Dolphin Browser on Android 2.3, The stock Android web browser on Android 2.3, As well as IE for Windows 8 Phone. And it doesn’t appear on any of those web browsers.
Devices were the HTC Thunderbolt and the Lumia 920.
Thanks for working hard on this man! It’s a great plugin. Though, a different problem I’m having with it, when you’re on the homepage of my site, the audio plugin won’t show in the posts. You have to actually click the individual posts to get the audio player to show up, Not sure if that’s a bug or not, but it’s something that’s always happened with it. Thanks again!
Alright, thanks. I’ll make a note of this and see what I can do for a future release.
Until then, I recommend using a previous version of the plugin.
How can I disable Autoplay in the basic player? And, is there a problem with chrome or chromium? On Iron (a chromium browser) I can’t see the regular playr or the basic player.
Unfortunately, the auto-play is a feature of the browser, not the plugin, so there’s very little I can do to help.
If there’s a problem with the plugin in Chrome, it’d be in Chromium. I only test against the most recent stable builds of Chrome.
Hi Tom,
Just wondering how soon we will be able to use a shortcode to put it exactly where we want it.
Thanks.
Hey Karl,
Since this is a free plugin, I can only work on it during my free time. Unfortunately, I don’t have an available date for you yet.
The best I can do is “as soon as I can” which I hope to be sometime this month
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amazing plugin. Helps me alot
. I like this plugin. thnx for your efforts
Thanks Usman!
Tom,
I’m new to the whole blog site/website game. I recently had a different audio player installed but it wouldn’t run on some devices. So I have chosen yours for its compatibility to Apple. Sadly for the life of me I cannot seem to make it work.
I believe the coding to be the major issue. Again, I’m really new to all of this.
Thanks in advance,
Jace
Hey Jace,
Sorry to hear you’re having trouble with it!
This is the first report that I’ve heard where it’s basically not working at all. If you can, please shoot me an email with details on exactly what you’re doing and we’ll go from there.
Talk soon!
Uploaded WP audio player and what it gives me is a link….not a neat little audio player
using Safari…with a m4a audio file…thank you in advance!
Hey Myra,
This is primarily designed to be used with MP3′s – can you try using and MP3 and let me know if that resolves the problem. If not, let me know and we’ll go from there.
Hi,
I’m using the player on my music blog and it looks great! – on desktops that is. The reason I picked this plugin is because the responsiveness.. but it doesn’t show in iOS (both chrome and safari). What could be the problem?
Victor
If you’re using WP Audio Player 1.9, then check out the latest release notes. There were some major improvements that have been released in the past two days; however, there were known issues with the player in both iOS and and in mobile Chrome.
I’d rather not have the plugin half-work in some devices and not other, so I made a decision to use each device’s built-in player until this issue is completely resolved.
The responsive nature of the plugin still works for users who may resize their browser on their desktop, but I’m aiming to have this issue resolve in the next release. It’s the last major feature I want to have fixed before it hits 2.0.
Thanks for such a great plugin!! It was working great for me, but lately it doesn’t seem to work on mobile phones. I have an iPhone 5, but also tried on iPhone 4 and Android phones. Am I missing something? Thanks for your help! I really don’t want to have to use another plugin. Here is an example link: http://hiphop101online.com/archive-show-playlist-48-january-8-2013/
Heya – so I looked that plugin on your sites and it displays correctly, but it’s not actually playing the audio.
This may have to do with the length of the audio and the time it takes to download; however, to make sure that nothing else is the issue, is this the issue that you’re talking about?
Also, when did this stop working?
Hi Tom, thanks for responding! The player works perfect on desktops, but it doesn’t play on mobile phones. It’s possible the size of the file is too large (about 100mb), but I’ll even try to let it load for a very long time and it still doesn’t play. I’m not exactly sure when it stopped working, to be honest. Maybe a couple of months? When I first installed it late last year, it was working great on mobile phones.
Gotcha – I’ll take a look when I get back to work on the plugin.
Thanks for reporting this, Sinoun!
Hi,
Is it possible to set the length of playback for the WP-Audio Player ?
Thanks,
Domi
Hey Domi – not. Right now, it just uses the length of the audio file.
Ok, thanks !
Perhaps will I find some PH coding to manage this… If any idea, thanks for telling me !
hey
Im new on WP audio Player and I have installed the plugin but I have no clue what command to type to have an mp3 linked to the player?
Can you help please?
I tried
[audio:http://www.example.com/wp-content/uploads/mysong.mp3
but it does not work
Hey Holder,
No need to use shortcodes!
Check out the screenshots in the plugin repository
And read the Updates To The Dashboard in this section to see how to use it.
Let me know if you have any other questions!
I’m also having trouble getting this to work. I’ve tried inserting the media into my post by both inputting the url, and also just the .mp3 file. Neither worked, and I can’t find any clear instruction on how to properly use this plugin.
Hey Bejamin,
Sorry you’re having trouble with the plugin – if you share a link to your site, I can take a quick look to see what’s up with it.
If you’ve uploaded the file or specified a URL then the player should simply appear at the bottom of each post. If not, then there’s likely a conflict somewhere with your installation.
Shoot me a link, I’ll take a look, and tell you what I find.