.

Menü:

.

2005

When demonstrating a portable audio player it was mentioned that it would display the lyrics while playing a song and an according file exists. The idea of using such a feature for radio programs arose. So we checked out some plugins for some common audio player programs.

We decided to implement this idea in the world wide web, using a widespread and established system. HTML combined with with Javascript/DOM (Document Object Model) seemed to be the most suitable way, also because it is platform independant and does not require any additional software installation.

March 2006

A first test version was developed: using Javascript, Texts are inserted in a HTML document at a defined time. There are no control funtions yet, except »Start« and »Stop«. The program was sucessfully tested on Windows and Linux systems using a few various web browsers like Netscape, Opera, Konqueror, Internet Explorer, ...

April/May 2006

The testversion was completely reworked to version 2.3. Control functions like »Pause«, »previous« and »next« were added.

In addition a first perlscript to enter the texts and timestamps is developed. If the text is without errors, the same script generates a webpage with a »Player« containig the input.

June/July 2006

A Content Management System (CMS) was implemebted to manage the web-contents, texts (subtitles) among other things. The script for entering the texts is also integrated in this CMS. Beside this i added the possibility for non-members to enter, temporarily save and playback texts.

The Javascript with the player was extended to version 2.7. Beside some bugfixes the control function for »Play« and »Pause« have been put together for simplicity. Some Browser dependent things were considered, and support for dynamic buttons was added. All kinds of texts now is inserted in the player webpage, which makes multiple language support nice and easy.

August 2006

We go online. The CMS and the texts that already exist are transfered to the webspace. From that time we also work on the web-contents and transcriptions of radio programs. Again and again we find new ways to improve the software and make things easier and more efficient.

We decided to embed the audio file into the player webpage because it was hard sometimes to start text and audio synchronously. Beside, there is a slight variance in the playing time, if text and audio are independently played back.

January 2007

In search for a proper solution we found the Quicktime plug-In.
Quicktime is pretty distributed and can be controlled by JavaScript. But we saw that the installation can be cumbersome for inexperienced users and it is officially available for Mac and Windows systems only.

March 2007

We found WebPlayer, a flash application, which plays MP3 files an can be controlled by JavaScript as well. Because the flash player plug-in is well distributed and also available for most platforms, it seemed to be a better solution.