Wicked Cool Podcast Display

Every now and then, you stumble across a software application that is just SLICK. Yesterday I came across another one by way of an email sent to me. My friend Ladd sent a link to Web Jukebox 4.1 by CoffeeCup software. While CoffeeCup software is not new to me it has been a number of years since I last visited their site. When the page loaded, I learn their developers have been busy designing a plethora of interesting applications. Check it out. (http://www.coffeecup.com)

Jukebox is a music player for your web site. However, it does something Windows Media Player only dreams to do. Jukebox allows you to setup a play list within the player. In addition, Jukebox contains over 20 skins for your web site. I happen to choose the white iPod for the Adventures in Podcasting site. (http://staffweb.peoriaud.k12.az.us/Shawn_Wheeler/podcast)

While this program is not free, it is certainly worth the $34.00 investment. If you are more interested in try before you buy, you may download a 21-day trial version.

My experience with the softare…
After downloading the trial version, I spent about twenty minutes creating the code to put on my site. (I had viewed the on-line tutorial before downloading.) This process actually involves selecting the MP3 files you wish to play on your site. Once the files are loaded into your play list, you have the option to change the order, add additional files or delete a file inadvertently loaded. (I made this mistake. ) Once I was happy with the order of the files, it is time to choose the skin. Jukebox offers 20 but I quickly grabbed the iPod skin. Clicking the preview button allowed me to view my creation. Cool, it looked cool so I returned to the software and clicked the save icon. At this point I could have simply uploaded files to my server using the built in up loader. Then paste in the player code into my web page. However… In my case, the MP3 files I wanted to play in this tool had previously been published to the web and uploading another set of Adventures in Podcasting episodes seemed silly.

Jukebox creates three files and folder when it saves the project. The folder contains images and the MP3 files. The other three files are an SWF file, an HTML file and an XML file. Remembering what Ladd taught me about building web pages from code years before, I opened XML file and changed the path to the MP3 files. Next, I made a few changes to the HTML file to include the text now on the page and the “NEW” image. With all the changes made, I uploaded the files minus the MP3 files to my website then placed the HTML code on the Adventures in Podcasting page. Wahoo, it looked cool and my links worked.

In the end, I found this software to be very slick. While I did tinker with the XML and HTML code, that was for my personal needs. Out of the box, this software works quite well and it is very easy to use. Don’t take my word for it, give it a try.