Question from Jacob!

Okay, I am building a website for a musician. Of course she wants a media player. No problem, I can build one in flash link it though an xml document. The problem is that media player can not cut off on every page.

I DO NOT want to use frames, iframes, or anything that would have bad SEO. Does any one have an ideas? I am kinda thinking Ajax. But I am not sure wither that would work, as I don't know Ajax.

Ajax would really be the only decent solution. It would look like a Flash site when you'd navigate it (loading spinners and whatnot), but it would be plain text. It just wouldn't be very smooth if JS was disabled.

Yeah, but that would also be horrible SEO...lol. Come on Ryan I expect something really smart from you...lol.

Ajax is the only solution (I can think of). But it's actually very simple with jQuery. I can do it in under 10 lines of Javascript...

If you have a template: (ie.: a part of the site that is common to every page)
1. put the flash player in there
2. create a div in which the content should be updated ('content div')
3. with javascript, fetch all links on the page and modify their behaviour so that:
3.a. Use ajax to fetch the content (only the content)
3.b. Use the response to update the content div.

If you don't have a template (ie.: every page is completely different)
1. wrap the entire page in a div ('page div')
2. put the flash player outside this wrapper (or create it via javascript)
3. with javascript, fetch all links on the page and modify their behaviour so that:
3.a. Use ajax to fetch the entire page.
3.b. Use the response to update the page div.

Send me a link!

I should've said more: It's perfect for SE's. If JavaScript is disabled (like a crawler), they'll see a bunch of standard pages. If not, it will be Flash-like. If a user has JS disabled, the site will be a bit choppy in the fact that the video will start over on each link clicked.

Come on, Jacob... you should know better than to expect anything but the best from me

Honestly in this case just pop a new window with the player so it is always accessible. I think in this case since it will be user requested that is more than acceptable.

__________________
I hate IE 6. Just sayin....
http://www.mevans76.com

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing at first, but I don't like popups If CNN.com had a video player in the same window as the articles, I'd use their site way more.

Then use an iFrame or something.

__________________
I hate IE 6. Just sayin....
http://www.mevans76.com

can you not use a php include? wouldnt that be better than an iframe? Just have the info where the links go to be in the incluse ad he can still have the music player where he wants to put it. Usually in a corner i hope. Better SEO no? Wi wi, poo poo, and all that french stuff.

The problem is that the media player will start over when you move to another page. It's not an include issue, it's a static include thing.