WebMonkey R8 - 2006/03/17

[Lowlander]

What is WebMonkey
WebMonkey is a pre-build website that will put your music collection online for others to see. It allows to browse your collection, listen to songs, download songs and view some statistics. You will need a webserver where you can host ASP pages and a MSAccess DB.

It is written in ASP and uses HTML, XHTML, CSS and JavaScript.

WebMonkey website:
WebMonkey support site


A newer version has been released. Check it out on the website

[holterpolter]

hi,
the screenshots and the examples on your site look very good. But i have some questions about it.

- Is there an easy way to test your Webmonky on my local machine?

- and is it possible to build an "offline" Version of the created WebMonkeypages , which i can share via CD with a friend?

[bbuchi]

I love the Webmonkey and i hope the next relaese of MediaMonkey will looks the Webmonkey (Albumart). But why must i download a m3u file before i can play with foobar, winamp or the Monkey self.

[JhotIII]

Fabulous. You have put in the fields I wanted in this new version. Bitrate & customfields. I will test some more, but this looks great. Thx a lot.

[JhotIII]

hi,
the screenshots and the examples on your site look very good. But i have some questions about it.

- Is there an easy way to test your Webmonky on my local machine?

- and is it possible to build an "offline" Version of the created WebMonkeypages , which i can share via CD with a friend?

You must enable IIS (assuming You run win xp, win 2000 or win server).
Install (if not already installed)
Control Panel
Add/remove programs
Add/remove windows components
Install IIS
Configure
Control Panel
Administrative tools
Internet Information Service
Web sites
default web site (win xp allows only one)
set home directory (to the directory you unpack webmonkey)
documents (set to index.asp)

for settings se readme & settings.asp
launch ie with http://localhost

and you are go
good luck

[JhotIII]

I love the Webmonkey and i hope the next relaese of MediaMonkey will looks the Webmonkey (Albumart). But why must i download a m3u file before i can play with foobar, winamp or the Monkey self.

set blnDownload = 0 in settings.asp
and you can play songs directly

[bbuchi]

in Firefox thats works. (a new window open and play the songs on the standardplayer)

but in IE that will not work. I must save the m3u file and than can i open this file. Webmonkey looks in IE better than in Firefox

[Lowlander]

You can run WebMonkey locally via IIS. IIS is available for Windows XP and Windows 2000. I have only tested WebMonkey on XP and Windows Server 2000.

Firefox doesn't support frame borders. I'm hoping to test some new solutions to solve this problem. So maybe I can fix it in the next release.

The play songs/playlist behavior depends on the browser and player used. Unfortunately there is not a whole lot I can do. You can of course use the build in player (real player or wmp) but that really isn't a great solution.

An offline version isn't possible with WebMonkey as you would need static html pages (would also be very slow in the current setup), but you might want to try this project: Advanced report, which will create a html version of your library.

Please add any bugs or request to this forum so I can start on the next version.

[Nautme]

Lowlander- I must compliment you on developing WebMonkey. I've been using Audigen for some time and love the WebMonkey implementation (so now I use WebMonkey).

Anyway, I've got some feature requests that I wanted to run by you. I would be happy to implement them on my own, but it's difficult when you come out with a new version (I made changes to R7 then you came out with R8). If you'd like some help with development, or if you are interested in my suggestions, please let me know.

[Lowlander]

Thanks, well the best is too list your requests here. Depending on what they are I might be able to implement them or work together with you on implementing them.

[Nautme]

Well, then I guess I'll give you some requests-

1. Hopefully the easiest, an option to disable the page transitions. I leave my transitions enabled in my browser for development (but I hate them).
2. Set the default focus on the login page to the User name if empty.
3. Add an option to remember User name (saved in cookie).
4. Add option to remain logged in.
5. Add title tag to href's in playlist (for tooltips).
6. Add link in the header to add all listed tracks to playlist (next to download all to playlist).
7. I access my site both internally and externally using different names. Setting strDrive to either causes some links not to work. Most pages don't really need the full path, but some like m3u.asp need to know the full path. I added a new variable just for those pages. Maybe using Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_HOST") might be a good solution (I'm using it now since I mentioned it).
8. I would like to be able to rate my songs. A way to add song ratings would be nice. I would probably never give anyone else access to do this.
9. An option to download all listed tracks either as an album wrap or zip file would be awesome.
10. In m3u.asp, I had to comment out the no-cache lines becuase the playlist wouldn't work in WinAmp. With the no-cache lines in, the file created by m3u.asp never makes it to the cache and WinAmp can't find it.

That's all I can think of for now. I have two problems that I'm curious if you could help with.

First, my images don't always load. If I right-click and choose show image, it works. I'm using Windows XP to host. Any suggestions?

Secondly, after adding files to my playlist, if I click the player button, I get a page not found error. If I right-click that page and choose back, it works the second time. Whatcha think?

If you'd like me to make any changes, let me know. If you have any suggestions or alternatives, I'm good with that too.

Thanks.

[Nautme]

I just thought of one more request.

The current configuration of WebMonkey requires that all song files be visible to the world via IIS or whatever web server is being used. This setup allows anyone to bypass logging in and access the songs by simply knowing the path to the songs. While most users may not know the path, any user who had previously downloaded a playlist would still have access to songs should you discontinue their account.

An alternate approach would be to create a gettrack.asp and pass it song=id (e.g. gettrack.asp?song=483). The asp page could check the logged in status, lookup the song and get the local path, do a binary read on the file, then do a Response.BinaryWrite to send the binary data back.

This would be fairly easy to implement (I can create the page or give you an example if you'd like). It would no longer require blnLocalPath as all songs could be referenced by the gettrack.asp page. Also, this would allow you to hide direct access to the MP3s and give more rights to them for tagging or rating via WebMonkey in the future.

Let me know what you think.

[Lowlander]

Good list.

The first point is that at this point there are no plans to allow users to modify tags thru WebMonkey.

1) No problem
2) No problem
3&4) I'm not a big fan of these options because of security reasons. It is a bit more work loggin in, but that makes it harder to hack the site
5) Please explain what tooltip you are talking about
6) Is on the todo list
7) Not sure, if you use external method it should work internally too no?
Not planned at this point
9) Sounds good, but don't know how to this at this point, I will need to research it more
10) I normally save lists, I will see what is best, some problems can occur when cached.


I run the site on both WinXP Pro and Win Server 2000 and neither have problems. WinXP has connection limits into IIS (10 connections). I have no clue what the problem could be as I don't have them.

Do click the play button in the Now Playing list or in the player window?

11) download requiring login is a good idea and implementing is no problem, just some work, hehe. I'm not sure about playlists and this feature, I will need to check out how the different players react to this.


You have got a lot of ideas and given me a lot of work, I can't make any promises about when and if, but some things will show up in the next version.

[Nautme]

Gotcha about modifying tags in WebMonkey. I'd really like that ability and I can figure out how to add it myself. I listen mostly at work and when a song pops up that isn't tagged correctly, I'd like to fix it then and there.

1 & 2. Great.
3 & 4. Security reasons would seem to me that it's all about people that have access to my computer. I can add on my own if it's not something you're interested in.
5. I'm referring to playlistshow.asp. The two Response.Writes just before the end of the file (just above the "If strColumn = "columnfill" Then" line). It's just nice if the playlist frame is not quite wide enough.
6. Great.
7. No. If my computer name is BOB, I access it internally at http://bob. Externally, I access it via http://bob.getmyip.com. Most of the links on the pages don't need the http://??? part as if you leave that off you get a relative path that works (e.g. href=music/song.mp3 turns into http://bob/music/song.mp3 or http://bob.getmyip.com/music/song.mp3). The only page that really needs to know the full path is m3u.asp since it's creating the playlist server side. If I were to specify http://bob.getmyip.com internally, I would end up with an external IP address that can't resolve to that PC through my router.
8. Okay. I can look about doing on my own.
9. I have code to do it to a zip file if you'd like me to throw something together.
10. I added the m3u extension on to the filename in m3u.asp, this way it just opens in WinAmp or MediaPlayer automatically. I haven't had any trouble commenting out those lines, but test away.

I am pretty much the only person using my XP Pro site, so I don't think it's a connection limit issue.

I click the play button in the player. I'm using Media Player as I really dislike Real Player.

11. I don't think it would be as much work as you do. I can make the getTrack.asp page for you and you could add it to the software. I think I can mimick your programming style pretty closely (you program like I do).

12. I just remembered this one. When viewing search results or items in track listing mode, the sorts don't appear to implement more than just the primary field. Adding a logical secondary sort would be helpful (e.g. clicking on Artist would sort by Artist, then Ablum, then TrackNo or clicking on Album would sort by Album, then Artist, then TrackNo).

I'm kind of anxious for some of the features. I'll implement them on my stuff, I just hate to have to redo them when you come out with a new version. Anything I can do to help, just let me know. I can make the getTrack.asp and getZip.asp pages if you'd like and then email them to you.

[Lowlander]

1) I created a solution, testing needs to show if it works
2) Already fixed
3&4) I need to see what I will do, I might include it, but I'm not sure it will make it to the next release
5) Already added, and adding it to some other places as well
7) Probably will add an option that can help
Modification might be added as an optional component in a future version. Another addition that is planned might make this more feasable.
9) Any code/example you have is welcome
10)

I added the m3u extension on to the filename

, I don't understand what you did, do you have a code example?
11) You will always have the problem that files are accesible. You will only need to know the path. With this solution that might be hard to figure out.
12) I need to check this out, will update sorts if required


You need to click the play button on the now playing list first, this will send the playlist to the player. After this the player buttons work. The problem is that players in webpages are limited in functionality. I'm looking into making this work better in the future.

IIS on WinXP pro doesn't give me any trouble. Not sure what could be your trouble.