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My Feed Player displays fine in FireFox and other browsers but not in Microsoft's Internet Explorer
My Feed Player requires users to "click to activiate plug-in" in Microsoft's Internet Explorer
My Feed Player says "XML not found"
Edit how my Feed Player displays and plays
I want a custom Feed Player
Audio sounds like the Chipmunks
The audio file displays but won't play
What are the features of the player?
I want Feed Player users to help promote my music
I think you should...
Contact us
My Feed Player displays fine in FireFox and other browsers but not in Microsoft's Internet Explorer
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If you are using the Big Contact Feed Player:
- And using it with a podcast feed other than one generated by Big Contact
- And your podcast feed ends in ".xml"
- And the Feed Player is not displaying correctly in Microsoft's IE browsers
Solution: Get new code from www.FeedPlayer.com.
Solution B: It's such a minor change. If you want to simply edit your html page that already has your Feed Player embeded in it: In the html code on your page: change the ".xml" to "%2Exml". Crazy yes?
So it turns out that IE doesn't know how to treat the .xml source url properly when it is displaying the page - that perhaps it is considering it as xml that it should display. In any case, this seems to be the culprit. If you have any issues drop us a line. And sorry for any troubles.
All new Feed Players embeded with code from www.FeedPlayer.com should work as intended.
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My Feed Player requires users to "click to activiate plug-in" in Microsoft's Internet Explorer
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Because Microsoft recently lost a patent lawsuit Microsoft changed how Internet Explorer handles embeded objects like Flash and Quicktime. If you want your users to be able to immediately be able to interact with your Feed Player (versus having to click once to 'active' the Flash plug-in) there is a solution.
The solution requires a javascript workaround for embeded objects like Flash swf and QuickTime movie files. Many consider this workaround from Deconcept as the best of breed: http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject.
Basically what it does is let javascript embed your swf rather than embed it directly with html. You put the js file the site provides you on your server. You then add different code in place of the html embed code.
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My Feed Player says "XML not found"
Possibility 1: It was working before - but now it isn't:
We recently updated how the Feed Player works so that Feed Players authors will have some
advanced features which we will be announcing in the near future. Regrettably we couldn't keep the system as it was.
To get your Feed Player working properly again go to the Feed Player home page, choose the player you want, copy the updated html code and replace the code on your site.
Possibility 2: My podcast feed is not a valid feed
The Feed Players require a valid podcast feed for it to work properly. That means it must be a valid rss 2.0 feed and have mp3s in enclosue tags.
Possibility 3: The url to my podcast feed is defective
Check to make sure the path to your podcast feed is correct. You can view your podcast in any browser window. Copy and paste the url to your browser just as you would do for any website link.
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EDIT HOW MY FEED PLAYER DISPLAYS & PLAYS
You can change how your Feed Player displays and plays on your website.
View the last table below in this section to see how to insert these
variables into your html. Do you want more changes than are listed
here? You want a Custom
Feed Player.
Initial View
AutoPlay
Repeat Playlist
Share Podcast
Standalone Player |
INITIAL VIEW
Tell Feed Player which tabbed window view to display when it first loads.
| Window To Display |
Variable |
| Shownotes / audio info |
initialview=info |
| Playlist menu |
initialview=menu < default |
| Subscribe |
initialview=subscribe |
| Share |
initialview=share |
AUTOPLAY
Tell Feed Player to start playing once your page loads.
| |
Variable |
| Play when page loads |
autoplay=yes |
| Do NOT play when page loads |
autoplay=no < default |
REPEAT PLAYLIST
Tell Feed Player to repeat the playlist once it comes to the last track.
| |
Variable |
| Repeat playlist |
repeat=yes |
| Do NOT replay playlist |
repeat=no < default |
SHARE PODCAST
Tell Feed Player to show the "share" tab that allows your listeners
to share your show.
| |
Variable |
| Share tab visible |
share=yes |
| Share tab NOT visible |
share=no < default |
STANDALONE PLAYER
| Tell Feed Player to include the Standalone Player button. This is
the little arrow button in the top right corner of the player that
pops up a standalone player. This is helpful if listeners want to
keep listening to your show while they click away from the page your
Feed player is embedded in. |
| |
Variable |
| Standalone button visable |
standalone=yes < default |
| Standalone button NOT visable |
standalone=no |
| And in case you didn't add this bit of javascript when you first
put the Feed Player on your site: here it is again. Flash has some
limitations with Javascript, so you have to add this to your page.
Add it anywhere between the <head></head> tags in your
html. |
MAKE CHANGES TO YOUR HTML
| Add or edit the variables you see above to the <param> and
<embed> tags in your Feed Player html code. Note:
you must place a "&" betwen each variable (including
your podcast url which is the value of the xmlurl variable. It's ok
if your podcast url has "&"s in it.) |
<object classid="clsid:d27cd ...
<param name="FlashVars"
value="xmlurl=http://mypodcast&initialview=info&autoplay=no&standalone=yes&share=yes&repeat=yes"
/>
<embed ... FlashVars="xmlurl=http://mypodcast&initialview=info&autoplay=no&standalone=yes&share=yes&repeat=yes"
...</object> |
CUSTOM FEED PLAYER
Find out more about our custom
services.
Audio sounds like the Chipmunks
There are two numbers to be aware of when you are creating your mp3s:
sampling rate and bit rate. The Feed Player, due to limitations of Macromedia's
Flash, only understands mp3s with sampling rates of 11k, 22k and 44k.
We suggest a sampling rate of 22k or 44k (a cd's sampling rate).
And while we are talking about creating your mp3 files: bit rate: the
higher the bit rate the higher the sound quality but the larger the file
size. For talk podcasts a bit rate of as low as 32k or 64k can sound good.
For music podcasts 128k will provide plenty of quality.
You should change these settings in the software you use to produce your
podcast mp3s. Review your software's instructions on how to do this. An
educated guess: try clicking on file or edit and look for preferences
or options. It probably will have a setting for 'Export Settings' or similar.
You can check your mp3 files' sampling and bit rates in iTunes. Play the
mp3 in iTunes and right click (pc) or control click (mac) the track and
'Get Info.' The summary will show you your track's sampling and bit rates.
To change your existing mp3s to a different sampling and/or bit rate you
can convert the file within iTunes if you like. Go to edit> preferences>
audio. Select 'MP3 Encoder' and for 'Setting' select 'custom...' Change
the settings you want (see first and second paragraphs above.) You may
also want to click 'advanced' to see which folder on your computer iTunes
will be storing your newly converted file. Click 'ok.' Next, right click
(pc) or control click (mac) the track and selct 'Convert Selection to
Mp3.' Top
The audio file displays but won't play
The mp3 link may be bad. Or the file is not an mp3 format. Hit the 'forward'
button. Top
What are the features of the player?
See the diagram below. Top
I want Feed Player users to help promote
my music
Are you a musician who wants to promote your music? The best way to do
this is to add your song to the Big
Contact Open Channel which goes out to all kinds of podcasters, mp3
bloggers and users of the Feed Player. Top
I think you should...
Do you have thoughts about how we can make the Feed Player better? Keep
in mind we are in beta and have a handful of features and improvements
on the docket... That said please feel free to let us know what you're
thinking. We need your feedback. Top
Contact us
We will try to respond as quickly as possible. Note that this address
has been tricky-ized to prevent spammers: contactATbigcontactDOTcom Top
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