Music Player That Lives Through Pages

Question

I have a master page and inside : a music player.

            <object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://flash-mp3-player.net/medias/player_mp3_maxi.swf"
                width="200" height="20">
                <param name="movie" value="http://flash-mp3-player.net/medias/player_mp3_maxi.swf" />
                <param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" />
                <param name="FlashVars" value="mp3=Preloader.mp3&amp;loop=1&amp;autoplay=1&amp;autoload=1" />
            </object>

It works and I can hear sound, but if I go to a different page, it stop (pause and return to start, I can still see it through and press play since its in my master page)

How do I make it play while I'm browsing through pages?

Note : The player contains a pause function and doesn't auto play so users wont be annoyed.

Answer 1

The old '90s way of doing this would be with browser frames. You could split your site into a frame that contains the music player, and a frame that lets people navigate your site.

However, there's a reason that most people have moved away from browser frames. They mess with your browsing experience. If someone clicks a link on your site to go somewhere else, they could still be stuck inside your frames. It's not cool.

The "Web 2.0" way of doing this involves making your whole site use AJAX, so the user never really leaves the "page" at all, but just loads different elements into the page as they click around. This is what Lala.com did, for example, before Apple bought them out and shut them down.

Answer 2

The only way is to keep the player on the page while the rest of the content loads in some other way. This could be achieved using AJAX or the dreaded HTML frame etc.

Answer 3

I think frames or dynamic AJAX content are the only solutions.

Answer 4

Most sites that keep content loaded/running throughout the entire experience use AJAX to update the content of a single page or Frames. Depending on what you have available, you can use either of these techniques to play the music while changing content on your page.

Answer 5

The master page is just a "template" that is applied to each content page. It is being reloaded everytime you browse to another content page. This is why you're seeing this behavior. Another popup window is the only solution that comes to mind besides AJAX.