Wimpy Rave - About

With Wimpy Rave, your media plays directly in your web page. Wimpy Rave automatically lists and plays media files that are located in the same folder as Wimpy Rave.

IMPORTANT: Rave was designed to work on a web server, not a local PC.

To install Wimpy Rave, upload the Wimpy Rave files to your web site. To managing what gets played in Wimpy Rave, upload media files to your Wimpy Rave installation folder. You can organize media files into sub folders. Sub folders will appear within Rave allowing folks to browse your collection.

You can learn about tools, plugins, skins, playlists and all the other cool features by visiting the Wimpy Rave product page at wimpyplayer.com

We highly recommend accessing the following files from your web server:
- This "READ ME" page
- The Customizer Tool
- General Rave testing
- The JavaScript Examples
Running Rave on your local PC may cause your browser to prohibit certain JavaScripts (such as pop up windows), and / or issue a security warning. Security warnings are built into the Adobe Flash plugin to warn users if a Flash file is run locally. There is no risk in running Rave locally because Rave was designed to run on a web server -- there is nothing within Rave that can cause problems to your local PC. If you absolutely must run Rave locally, you can configure your Adobe Flash plugin to "allow" specific Flash files to run by clicking the "Settings" button on the pop up dialog.

- Installation
- Customization
- Real World Usage
- Additional Documentation
- Troubleshooting

Support

Visit the support area at www.wimpyplayer.com for more information about Wimpy Rave Player, including:
- Updated versions
- FAQs (Frequently asked questions)
- Search for answers
- How to create FLV or SWF video files
- How to convert your existing video to FLV or SWF video

Technical support is available via email only. To submit a support question, visit the "Technical Support" area at wimpyplayer.com

Installation

NOTE: If you are installing the ASP version, references to "rave.php" should be assumed as "rave.asp." Likewise, if you are installing the ColdFusion version, references to "rave.php" below should be assumed as "wimpy.cfm" -- because all three versions are installed in the same manor.

1. Create a new folder named "wimpy" on your website.

This folder will be referred to as the "Wimpy Installation Folder." It is not required that the new folder be named "wimpy" -- you can name the folder anything you want.

We highly recommend only using alpha-numeric characters for the folder name, try not to use punctuation characters such as: ? ' & % $ SPACE.

The only punctuation symbols that are acceptable are _ (underscore) and - (hyphen).

Example:
www.yoursite.com/wimpy/

2. Upload Wimpy Rave.

Upload the contents of the Wimpy Rave package to your Wimpy Installation Folder

Example:

Core Wimpy Files:
www.yoursite.com/wimpy/rave.php*
www.yoursite.com/wimpy/rave.swf
www.yoursite.com/wimpy/rave.js
Special HTML Files:
www.yoursite.com/wimpy/rave_downloadFile.html
www.yoursite.com/wimpy/rave_fullscreen.html
www.yoursite.com/wimpy/rave_popout.html
www.yoursite.com/wimpy/customizer.html
Media Files:
www.yoursite.com/wimpy/Example FLV.flv
www.yoursite.com/wimpy/Example NP3.mp3
www.yoursite.com/wimpy/Example SWF.swf
www.yoursite.com/wimpy/skins/*.*

Core Wimpy Files and Special HTML Files MUST be located in the same folder.

Media Files should be in the same folder as Wimpy. You can organize your media files in sub folders within your Wimpy Installation Folder.

Example:

www.yoursite.com/wimpy/alternative/*.*
www.yoursite.com/wimpy/ambient/*.*
www.yoursite.com/wimpy/rock/*.*
www.yoursite.com/wimpy/r_and_b/*.*

NOTE: Notice that we did not use "R & B", instead, we only used acceptable punctuation and alpha-numeric characters.

NOTE: *.* means "all files" (e.g. any file, any extension).

3. Navigate to Wimpy Rave on your web site.

Open a web browser and pull up rave.php on your web site by typing the URL to rave.php into your browser's address bar.

Example:
http://www.yoursite.com/wimpy/rave.php

4. Upload Media.

If the example files display in the playlist and play, then Wimpy is working fine in "automatic" mode -- upload additional FLV, MP3 or SWF files to your Wimpy Installation folder.

You can create sub-folders within the Wimpy Installation folder to better organize your media. Sub-folders will appear within the Wimpy Rave Playlist with a + next to the folder name.

If the files did not display properly, review the "Troubleshooting" section of this page.

Customization

Customizer Tool

The Customizer Tool allows you to configure:
- Player behavior
- The look and feel by applying a skin to the player
- Which playlist Rave will load

The Customizer Tool outputs HTML code that allows you to include Rave throughout your web site.

To access the Customizer Tool, use a web browser and type in the address to "customizer.html" on your web site.

Example:
http://www.yoursite.com/wimpy/customizer.html

Once you've configured Wimpy Rave to your specifications, click the "Refresh Player / Code" link to update the HTML code at the bottom of the page. Then click the "save" button to save the HTML code, or right-click into the text area that contains the HTML code and choose "Select All" from the menu and copy and paste the HTML code into your exiting HTML page.

When entering URLs to files, it is important to use "full URLs." Using full URLs will ensure that Wimpy Rave will work other pages throughout your site. See "Real World Usage" below and "Relative and Absolute."

Skin Machine

Skin Machine is a desktop program that you can use to create new skins or modify existing skins.

Skin Machine allows you to arrange or remove buttons and just about any other "object" within the player. You can also use custom graphics within your skin -- allowing you to create a player that is fully custom tailored to your liking.

Skins are XML files that contain information about buttons and other "objects" within the player such as: size, position, orientation, file names and color. When you save a new skin, Skin Machine automatically collects and renames any associated graphics you may have loaded -- leaving your original graphics in-tact.

Skin Machine Links:

- Download Skin Machine
- Learn More
- Browse Skins

Playlister

Playlister allows you to manually create playlists.

Playlister was designed to:
- Minimize server load
- Run Wimpy on a CD, DVD or Hard Drive
- Run Wimpy on servers that don't support PHP, ASP or ColdFusion
- Customize the order in which items appear in the list.
- Customize the Artist, Title, Image, Description and Links.

The playlist data is saved as an XML playlist file, which enables you to run Wimpy from just about anywhere including Web Servers, CDs, DVDs and local machines.

An XML playlist can be used in lieu of wimpy.php/asp/cfm to populate the list of tracks within Rave. An XML playlist is a text-based XML file that contains information about each file you would like to present in the player.

Playlister Links:

- Download Playlister
- Learn More
- Using XML Playlists

Real World Usage

When using Wimpy in the "real world" all references to all files associated with Wimpy should be full URL's.

Although "relative" URLs can be used, we highly recommend using full URL's or "absolute" paths to files. Flash is a little tricky with how it determines it's relationship to other files. In a nut shell, SWF files "take on" the location of the HTML file that it is embedded in.

Using full URLs will eliminate many hours of frustration.

For example, in this documentation we may reference a single file as:

<script language="JavaScript" >
makeWimpyPlayer("example3.flv");
</script>

When you go to test out Wimpy on your web site, you should use something similar to:

<script language="JavaScript" >
makeWimpyPlayer("http://www.yousrsite.com/path/to/example3.flv");
</script>

Using a full URL will enable you to move HTML snippets around from page to page on your site, without having to re-edit the HTML code to set the proper path.

Click here for more information on using "relative" paths (e.g. "../../file.xyz" ).

Additional Documentation

- JavaScript Controls
- Wimpy Rave API
- User's Manual
- Frequently Asked Questions

Troubleshooting

If after accessing rave.php with your web browser, you get a bunch of code, then your web serve does not support PHP. Try installing the ASP or ColdFusion version.

If the player displays, but does not contain any files in the playlist, then chances are your server administrator has limited the capabilities of ASP, preventing Wimpy Rave from taking advantage of certain functions such as being able to automatically read the contents of the directory and automatically presenting the list of files within the player. Contact your server admin to see if they can configure ASP to allow Wimpy to work properly.

If the player displays the SWF and MP3 example files, but not the FLV example, you may need to configure your web server's "mime types" so that it recognizes FLV files properly, or you may need to ensure that you have uploaded the FLV file using "binary" mode. Click here for more information on this type of problem.

See Also:

- User's Manual
- Frequently Asked Questions

There's a lot of information on the two links above, so it may be easier to go to the main Support Page and search:

This document is part of the Wimpy Rave documentation, available at: www.wimpyplayer.com.