downloads, code samples, and how-tos

arsenal audio started life as a Hayden Porter Remixolgy column for sonify.org. Of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone, so I began adding... and adding. The Golden Mean gave me the idea to use XML for the song list for the player, and somewhere else on the web I picked up the idea of using PHP to read through my mp3 folders and dynamically generate the XML. Here's that file.

So then I needed PHP to be able to read mp3 id3 tags to generate the XML for the song list. A search on the web turned up a number of options that were way too involved, so I wrote my own id3 tag reader (well, just the v2 tags - the v1 tags are straightforward enough and available many places on the web). No warranties expressed or implied, but it works for me, and if you want to try it, you can download it.

Then I wanted a shuffle function... and it should play continuously as you navigate the site... well, all that got incorporated too. Here's the .fla source file. Finally, I wanted pages in the music section of the site to be able to load songs into the player, which required some javascript. Most of this was garnered from one web site or another; the relevant functions are available below.

var movie = "apAudio";

function getMovie(movieName) { // returns proper object reference
  if (window.document[movieName]) {
    return window.document[movieName];
  }
  if (navigator.appName.indexOf("Microsoft Internet")==-1) {
    if (document.embeds && document.embeds[movieName]) {
     return document.embeds[movieName];
    }
  } else {
    return document.getElementById(movieName);
  }
}

// Checks if movie is completely loaded.
// Returns true if yes, false if no.
function movieIsLoaded (theMovie) {
  // First make sure the movie's defined.
  if (typeof(theMovie) != "undefined") {
   // If it is, check how much of it is loaded.
    return theMovie.PercentLoaded() == 100;
  } else {
    // If the movie isn't defined, it's not loaded.
    return false;
  }
}

function playSong(title) {
  // frame 5 (here referenced as 4) gets new song index and plays it   m = getMovie(movie);
  if (movieIsLoaded(m)) {
    m.StopPlay();
    m.SetVariable("songTitle",title);
    m.GotoFrame(4);
  }
}

function saveSong() {  // on page unload, saves play vars in flash shared object
  m = getMovie(movie);
  if (movieIsLoaded(m)) {
    m.GotoFrame(9);
  }
}

function apAudio_DoFSCommand(command,params) {  // accepts messages from flash for debugging
  alert(params);
}

function fixFlash() {  // so IE doesn't give you that annoying "click to use control" message
  theObjects = document.getElementsByTagName("object");
  for (var i = 0; i < theObjects.length; i++) {
    theObjects[i].outerHTML = theObjects[i].outerHTML;
  }
}


abstract began, like so many things do, with a google search. I was looking for a little jazz (so to speak) for some of the music pages on the previous version of this site and thought some kind of slideshow with my abstract photos might work. I knew it was possible to do transitions in Internet Explorer but I wanted to work within web standards as much as possible so Flash seemed like the better option.

Lo and behold, Todd Dominey at Dominey Design had built a Flash slideshow and put it into the public domain (meanwhile he has improved upon it to the point where you don't need to mess with ActionScript and offered it for sale). Once again I couldn't leave well enough alone - just still images fading into one another seemed too... peaceful, I guess.

So I made it into a small window which behind which large images dance, all viewed through a colored filter to blend better with the site's, er, aesthetic. Once again images are loaded dynamically with a PHP-generated XML page. Finally I added a button to stop the madness if you find it too distracting (one could argue it's like using blinking text).