Song Player problems

[T.C. Elliott]

Yesterday and today the new player hasn't been working for me either. It worked (sometimes sporadically) last week. But right now if I hit play the best I can do is get my cursor to highlight the play button.

PC > Windows 7 > firefox 21.0

edit:
But the old player still works fine and I'm not worried about it much. Just thought you might want to know.

[64Guitars]

The current version of Firefox is 22.0.

http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

It supports MP3 playback via the operating system in Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8. Note that the MP3 support is coming from the operating system, not Firefox itself. Firefox merely passes the MP3 file to the operating system. In Windows, the MP3 is played via its Media Foundation Framework. To make sure this feature is enabled in Firefox, type "about:config" into the address bar and search for "media.windows-media-foundation.enabled". Make sure it's set to "true". That should be the default in Firefox 21 and 22 but something could have changed it.

MP3 support for Linux is expected in Firefox 24 which is scheduled for release on September 17, 2013. When that happens, it will be easier for me to work on the players.

A problem we noticed with Internet Explorer 9 is that it only works when the file has the extension ".mp3". But files attached to messages don't have an extension and IE won't play them. I'm guessing that the same problem also exists in IE 10. That's a bug in IE in my opinion. Only Windows relies on file extensions to determine a file's type. Linux and other unix-based operating systems have no such requirement, so filenames don't require extensions. On the web, HTML5 sends the mime type which tells the browser that the file is an MP3. That's all it should need. The file extension shouldn't matter.

It's possible that Firefox has the same file extension problem as IE. I can't check it out because I don't have any of the supported operating systems (Vista, Win 7/8). I did try our HTML5 player in the Epiphany web browser just now and it works just fine. Epiphany uses the WebKit layout engine which is also used by Google Chrome and Apple Safari, so I assume our HTML5 player will work in those browsers too.

[T.C. Elliott]

The firefox update failed. Apparently my system doesn't meet the requirement of firefox as I've gotten the message twice. Oh, and I found this little blurb which might explain it.

"Please note that while the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7 can be used to run Firefox 22, only 32-bit builds of Firefox 22 are supported at this time."

[64Guitars]

Does this help?

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/update-failed-error-message-when-updating

[T.C. Elliott]

Yes, it did. Although I just spent some time starting to set up Chrome. I ran firefox as an administrator and it automatically updated to 22.0

But the player still doesn't work. The volume buttons work, but clicking on play does nothing.

[64Guitars]

But the player still doesn't work. The volume buttons work, but clicking on play does nothing.

What does the top player on the following page do?

https://songcrafters.org/community/index.php?action=sp

[Speed Demon]

T.C., are you running the 64 bit version of Windows?

If so, you would be better served by downloading Waterfox and removing Firefox altogether.
Waterfox is the 64 bit version of Firefox. Plays nicely with 64 bit OS's.
It's the only browser I use now and, like Firefox, it is easy to customize to your liking.

I can provide tips on how to make Firefox and Waterfox run a good bit quicker than they do when using the default settings.

[Speed Demon]

64G, this little gem just popped up within the last 48 hours.

I'm used to using an iPod Touch when not at the computer. I've had no problems with anything on Songcrafters. Till now.

I noticed that numerous avatars no longer appear properly. Not everybody's, but still a considerable number. Here is a screen shot of what some avatars look like on the iphone devices now.
                                          

[T.C. Elliott]

yup, 64bit. I just googled... actually I just duckduckgoed... okay, I just ducked?

Erm, I just searched for waterfox and it looks promising. I might have a go.

[64Guitars]

64G, this little gem just popped up within the last 48 hours.

I'm used to using an iPod Touch when not at the computer. I've had no problems with anything on Songcrafters. Till now.

I noticed that numerous avatars no longer appear properly. Not everybody's, but still a considerable number. Here is a screen shot of what some avatars look like on the iphone devices now.

It seems to be a Safari quirk. Kenny Mac had a similar problem last month on his iPad. I think he fixed it by updating the OS to the latest version. But before you do that, try clearing the cache. I suspect that Safari's pulling rubbish out of the cache instead of the correct images. When you clear the cache, it will be forced to download the actual images again, so they should display correctly (at least till the next time this cache bug pops up again). You could try updating Safari to the latest version too. Maybe it's fixed in the latest version. If all else fails, try updating the OS if it's not up-to-date already.