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Level 1

25 points

Why will Safari not play MP3s embedded in my iWeb pages when Firefox can?

One would have thought that if iWeb was going to get picky over the scenarios in which it would behave correctly, it would favour Apple-centric enviroments. But this doesn't appear to be the case when building an iWeb site with embedded MP3 files.

The published site behaves perfectly when viewed in Firefox and yes, even IE's latest incarnation. Files may take a while to download but they play when the download has finished. Safari is a different story. The MP3 files embedded in some pages simply will not play when viewed with Safari.

This page in particular has never worked in Safari -

http://www.whisperycat.co.uk/version_5/sounds/Entries/2011/3/23_Promenade.html

A small blue questionmark appears instead of the 'Play' button.

Any workarounds or is it just the case that Safari and iWeb are incompatible on this fundamental point???

Mac Mini, Mac OS X (10.6.7), Dual Core 2Gb RAM

Posted on May 5, 2012 6:10 AM

21 replies

Wyodor

Level 6

19,930 points

May 7, 2012 12:55 AM in response to whisperycat

After some testing is shows that adding illustrations to a tune in iTunes the MP3 file does not play (with or without an iWeb page) in Safari.

When using this app to add an illustration to the MP3 file

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/21456/id3-editor

the illustration is shown in iTunes when you add the tune and it will play in a webpage in the browser (with or without iWeb).

So apparently it's a bug in iTunes when adding the picture.

You can safely use MP3 files in all browsers without any problem.

Wyodor

Level 6

19,930 points

May 7, 2012 1:23 AM in response to Wyodor

And speaking about odd.

When I add your original tune to iTunes and then add it to iWeb, the tune will not play.

When I remove the image from your tune (drag the image to the desktop) and then add it to iWeb, it will play.

When I add the image to the tune (drag it from the desktop) in iTunes again and use the tune in iWeb again, it will play in the webpage.

Somewhere in the chain of events your tune was effected when the image was added.

whisperycat Author

Level 1

25 points

May 7, 2012 1:40 AM in response to Wyodor

Very interesting Wyodor, thanks for your observations. The audio component of the mp3 is what I'd consider to be it's 'payload' with any artwork and other tags incidental. I can Bluetooth my mp3's to my Nokia 6330i and not only do they play but the artwork is also displayed. Apple can't control what non Apple browsers do with an iTune created file but I'm suprised that iTunes and Safari aren't integrated in any useable way on this front. As previously mentioned iWeb's discontinuation has sealed it's fate, any bugs like this will now exist for whatever remains of iWeb's lifetime.

Yuroon

Level 1

0 points

Sep 26, 2012 12:09 PM in response to whisperycat

Reading this, I suspect Itunes is the problem indeed. I just posted this:

After a week of mailing with the makers of It's Learning I have found a solution.

The problem occured when opening a mp3 within It's Learning, an Electronic Learning Surrounding. Safari would just 'load' the file, but nothing would actually happen. At the end I discoverd this would happen to 'only' 49 mp3's in a list of songs my first year pupils use for learning excercises. Some 80 other files, from 2nd and 3rd year pupils did not have this issue.

When uploading a new version of the same file, it still did not solve the problem. After ripping the CD and renaming all the files, it seemed to work, so I started to rearrange the files, names, albumtitles etc. And provide them with an illustration of the cover, because this looks nice on my mp3 player. But then the problem reoccured. The file kept on loading... So I unpictured all the files, and uploaded the mp3's again. Now they do open in Safari.

This issue with the 'corrupt' files, did not happen on Firefox for Mac or on PC's with Windows and Internet Explorer.

Although previously the files had no issue's untill about a week ago, this 'suddenly' occured. This is the same with letters in titles like é. Uploading files with this in the title did end with an 'unfindeable file' message.

Best regards,

Jeroen Pouw

whisperycat Author

Level 1

25 points

Sep 26, 2012 3:27 PM in response to Yuroon

Hi Jeroen.

Sounds like iTunes is speaking a meta-language all the browsers except Safari understand. I'm suprised Safari can't handle an iTunes format. If you still experience intermittent unplayable files, lookout for filenames containing non English alphabet characters, math symbols, the whole range of characters ( % $ @ ! etc), invisible control characters- any one of these can trip you up in one app but not another.

Glad you got things sorted.

Kind regards

whisperycat

Roddy

Level 6

17,265 points

Sep 26, 2012 5:36 PM in response to whisperycat

Its a long time since this problem appeared and I forget most of the details but it is related to the meta data.

One of my workarounds when trying to find the cause of this was to remove the data and add it with another aplication - Bias Peak.

I don't ever use iTunes to process or store files or QuickTime to play audio anyway. Nowadays its better to use an HTML5 player with flash fallback.

I recommend John Dyer's audio version of the mediaelement player for single songs. See the bottom of this page for an example...

http://www.iwebformusicians.com/Website-Music-Players/HTML5-Audio-In-A-Box.html

You can see from my examples that several can be used in one HTML Snippet sharing the same basic code.

There are a number of good playlist style players around now that use HTML5 with flash fallback like this...

http://www.iwebformusicians.com/Website-Music-Players/music-box.html

... and these...

http://www.ezmacwebdesign.com/Audio-Playlist-Players/audio-playlist.html

Why will Safari not play MP3s embedded in my iWeb pages when Firefox can?