1 Pixel Out

I knew about this plugin already but I just upgraded to the latest version (0.3) and I believe it is now close to perfection. The best feature in my opinion is the inspector tab that lets you stroll though the source, style, layout, events and DOM. It also logs XmlHttpRequests for AJAX debugging and has a JavaScript console. I tried several FF plugins for debugging JavaScript and CSS in the past but this one has to be the best (until someone comes up with something even better of course).

Get it now from JoeHewitt.com.

Today, I finally came accross a fix for the ridiculous widths of form buttons in IE. Jehiah Czebotar came up with this solution and it works perfectly. No more rediculously wide IE buttons.

Update

To make Jehiah's solution work in "standards" mode, don't forget to add a unit to the dummy width rule for IE:

<style>
td { border:1px solid red; }
.button {
	margin:0;
	padding:0 .25em;
	width:auto;
	overflow:visible;
}
</style>

<!--[if IE]>
<style>
.button { width:1px; }
</style>
<![endif]-->

Another day, another update. 1.2.2 fixes a bug with the “replace all mp3 links” option (again!). If you were using uppercase tags or attributes, the links were not being replaced. Download the update or use the Upgrade wizard if you already have version 1.2! Thanks go to Ken Sun for reporting it.

A new minor update for Audio Player is now available. It fixes a small bug with the “replace all mp3 links” option. This was reported by Ye Jin Lee. Link tags with extra attributes (such as title, class and rel) were ignored by this option. The 1.2.1 update fixes this and all link tags to mp3 files should now be replaced.

Note: Those of you who already upgraded to 1.2 can use the upgrade wizard to install this update. Just click Check for updates in the Audio Player options panel and if your server configuration allows downloading and unzipping, the upgrade wizard will guide you through the update operation.

Enjoy!

After 3 release candidates and a lot of help from some very supportive beta testers, I’m proud to announce the release of version 1.2 of my Audio Player plugin for WordPress. This is quite a significant release because of new features that should be very helpful for podcasters. When I first released this plugin into the public domain, the description included this note: “not designed for podcasting”. Now, after some excellent suggestions from Salim Fadhley who looks after the Resonance FM podcasts site, Audio Player has become ideal for WordPress podcast blogs.

New features:

• Automatic enclosure integration: It is now possible to setup Audio Player to insert a player below all posts that have an mp3 enclosure. This is perfect for podcasters that set their enclosures manually.
• Opening and closing audio clip inserts: An excellent suggestion from Salim who wanted to include a message at the beginning and end of each podcast. You can now set these up in the Audio Player options panel.
• Much better handling of multiple player instances on one page: A lot of people insert many players on a single page. This happens a lot on podcasting blogs because each post has an audio file. Before, you could open several players and they all played the audio at the same time. This certainly created interesting results but could be very annoying for the reader/listener. With version 1.2, opening a player automatically closes all other instances on the same page.
• Feed content options: A lot of people asked for this feature. Instead of the player, the previous version inserted a download link in feeds. You now have 3 choices: replace with nothing, a link to the mp3 file or your own custom message.
• Support for multiple clip playback: It is now possible to send a list of files to the player. Insert a comma-delimited list of urls/file names and Audio Player will play them in sequence. This is still experimental as the player interface doesn’t include next/previous skip controls.
• Replace all mp3 links feature: You now have the option to tell Audio Player to replace all links to mp3 files contained in your posts/pages with a player instance. A few people have registered an interest in this feature and it was easy to implement so I included it in this release. I’m not convinced of its usefulness but hey, it’s another option!

Version 1.2 also includes fixes for a few bugs (including a nasty one that turned the player completely black in IE/Flash 6) and a lot of code improvements. With Salim’s help, I also redesigned the options panel. It is now much more readable. I have also added a preview option to the colour scheme picker and an experimental Check for updates and Upgrade wizard feature. Wow!

I would like to thank Salim Fadhley for his excellent suggestions and help with improving the options panel and Chris Farwell, Amit Gupta, HART and Karl Bedingfield for their help and support during the beta phase.