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jPlayer is My New Best Friend

I’ve been looking at alternatives to Flash for loading and playing sound files for a while now. Any iPhone user out there can tell you that they still do not support Flash even though there a lot of reports out there that Apple and Adobe are working towards an agreement. I’m somewhat impatient and want my audio clips to be as available to everyone as I can make them. Even iPhone users.

Unfortunately in my search I found no other real cross-browser solution except for Flash. I did find jPlayer though.

When developing this blog template I chose jQuery from all the other javascript frameworks out there because of its ease of use and flexibility. jPlayer is a plugin written for the jQuery javascript framework. It does use a hidden Flash file to play the music, but is controlled through javascript. Since I was already fairly familiar with jQuery, I went with this option. Also, the real beauty of jPlayer is the ability to easily style the player using HTML and CSS. Although WordPress offers some audio support, I wanted something that followed the look and feel of my site.

After incorporating jPlayer and testing it out on the iPhone, I was stunned. My mp3 files were opening and playing when I hit the play button. It appears jPlayer also detects Flash support, just like the SWFObject library. I’ve searched the site and tried to figure out the reason for this, but haven’t discovered it yet. I thought maybe it used the SWFObject library. If anyone knows, I’m curious.

So, I found a way to play my sound files over the iPhone and all is good in the kingdom. If you’re looking at ways to get your flash video or mp3 files to display on iPhone, I suggest checking out SWFObject. If you’re looking for a good customizable audio player that works with jQuery definitely visit Happyworm’s jPlayer site.

Published inItems of InterestProgrammingThoughtsWeb

7 Comments

  1. I haven’f found any example where the song was played in the iPhone web interface. It always opens QuickTime player instead ;-(

  2. That’s the only way it can work Frederic, unfortunately. And judging by what Apple has done with Flash I doubt it will work any other way now. For me, I’m just happy that the songs will play on the iPhone or iPad. I feel your pain nonetheless.

  3. We had the opportunity to test jPlayer on the new Apple OS4 and were happy to see it play audio natively in the mobile Safari browser.

  4. I just tested it out. It works awesome on my iPhone! Thank you to you and your co-workers in creating this great plugin.

  5. Awesome, works great, thanks!

  6. I realize I’m a little late to this party, but oh my goodness I just tried this plug in on my iPhone and it works!!! The only flash left on my site was for audio playback, tonight that is about to change.

    http://www.radiomixtape.com/mixtapes/5

  7. Administrator Administrator

    jPlayer is pretty great. Glad I could help.

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