A major update to the ever-popular Player stack. This update is free for anybody who has purchased the stack after 1st January 2015 (login to your Paddle account to get the latest version). For older purchases, please get in contact by email (with proof of purchase) to receive a discount coupon code. Player 2 can be installed alongside older versions of Player - to permit a gradual ‘migration’ of audio and video content into this newest version.
What’s new in this update?
- Rearranged, merged, regrouped and renamed some settings, to make Player even quicker and easier to setup
- New options to choose how audio or video content is preloaded; to promote faster loading webpages
- The download button now works on Safari 10 and automatically links to your MP3 or MP4 file
- Totally rewritten support for iPhone and iPad. Where supported, video content now plays within the webpage - instead of opening in a separate window. iPhone retains support for standard iOS media controls
- Added support for optional OGV and WAV media types
- Much easier (code-free) setup of player controls. You now have full control over which buttons are shown on mobile and the ability to easily change the order of controls (from left to right) using sliders in the stack settings. Font Awesome button markup is still editable
- Added the option to play and pause video, by simply clicking on it
- You can now Chromecast a video directly to a Google Chromecast dongle or compatible smart TV, from an Android phone or tablet
- Conditional loading of jQuery 2 and Font Awesome 4.7 icons
- New option to have audio or video content pause when it is scrolled outside of the viewport (a.k.a Facebook style)
- Progress bars can now be animated with optional stripes
- Added support for DOGs (digital onscreen graphics) so you can brand your video content with custom logo images or icons
- Any empty audio and video sources are now removed from the source code, to prevent HTML validation errors
- Refreshed the default appearance of the toolbar. Now using CSS flexbox to equally-space the controls on all screen widths
- Support for optional title tooltips, on the player controls. This can improve accessibility of your completed player interface
- When you send a video to full screen, it will now continue playing from the point it was in the webpage
- New horizontal spacing options for the media duration and current time clocks
- Got rid of some settings (like shadow effects) which are accomplishable with other free stacks (e.g. Shady)
- Added a new optional setting, to apply basic copy protection to the playing media (this suppresses right-clicking when enabled)
- Brand new animated user interface for the volume controls on desktop web browsers
- Custom controls are now displayed within fullscreen mode
- The full screen button toggles automatically between new expand and minimise icons
- Support for realtime Google Analytics tracking, so you can easily and accurately record user interactions with your players
- Captions and subtitles can now be toggled from within fullscreen mode
- A new option to pause the audio or video when a user clicks anywhere outside of the Player stack
- New RGBa colour picker for icon shadows, within the toolbar
- We can now and fetch the audio or video duration time via decoded metadata, without needing to begin download of the media file
- A large quantity of other minor fixes, tweaks and various ‘under the hood’ improvements
Important: Player 2 now requires a minimum of RapidWeaver 6 and Stacks 3. This stack will no longer function with older versions of stacks or RapidWeaver.
Player remains the single-most sophisticated audio and video player available for Stacks. Nothing else compares. If you are serious about getting audio or video content into your website professionally, then this is absolutely the stack you need for the job! Its light codebase, attractive styling and broad feature set make it a must-have. Superbly engineered and the perfect stack to broadcast yourself with! Watch the tutorial video and download your free demo version today.
I hope you continue to enjoy using the Player stack. If you have any questions, bug reports or feature requests about Player, please email me direct. I get loads of messages and notifications on the RapidWeaver forums every day and it’s sometimes difficult to see or respond to everything. Email is best if you require a fast reply from me. 