Website Audio

The EverWeb default audio player widget is OK if there are only one or two on a page and there is a separate version of the website for tablet users. Most website audio players were developed several years ago before touch devices like the iPad were invented and are really unsuitable for use on these devices. The play/pause button is too small for easy fingertip tapping and the volume control is even less useful.
Another problem with the default audio player is that the audio files are allowed to preload with the rest of the web page - whether the visitor wants to play them or not. This is obviously not good for those using mobile networks with data limits and also slows page load time.
This widget creates a round or square play/pause button which is large enough for easy operation on mobile devices. Preload is prevented and, if there are two or more players on the page, one player will stop when another is selected.
The player styles are created using pure CSS so there are no images to download. The colors can be customised, the border and radius are optional and a hover box shadow can be added when the player is used on the full version of the site.
The player has options for autoplay and loop althoug autoplay should be avoided and, in any case, doesn't work on mobile devices.
Using a standalone player like this is not very good in terms of search engine optimisation. Ideally, the player should be inserted in an HTML5 element along with track title, artist name and perhaps copyright info. See the both the Audio & Podcast Sections of this site for better options and the more efficient Playlist type players.
Audio Files
Audio files for website playback are normally in the compressed .mp3 format. Using .m4a files will provide a noticeable increase in audio quality without too much of an increase in file size. This quality will only be noticeable if the visitor is using HiFi speakers, studio monitors or good quality headphones. Professional formats such as .aiff and .wav are far too large for website use.
Note: Like all files which form part of a URL, audio file names should have no spaces or special characters in them. Use hyphens to replace spaces. Quite a lot of song titles have apostrophes in them. Make sure these are removed.