) against it.
Other items of music will have a play symbol
(
)
against them and clicking on one of these will play that item instead.
Clicking on the playing item will pause it.
There are two indexes of the albums that catalogue the archive. One is a list of the albums sorted by artist name, and the other is a list sorted by album name.
If the album contains documentation (dance notes, music notation, lyrics, newsletters, etc) it is marked with a “¶”. If the album contains video it is marked with a “∨”. Otherwise the album contains music (audio).
Clicking on the name of an album in the index will open the page relating to that album.
The browser search facility (typically Ctrl-F) allows the index to be searched for a specific term. The Ctrl-Home or Ctrl-End keys may be used to scroll to the start or end (respectively) of the index.
A long press (mouse left-button down and hold for at least a second before releasing) on the right-most 20% of the blue background will scroll the displayed index up or down according to the vertical location of the click. Therefore, for example, if this is half-way down the browser window, the index will scroll half-way down, giving a quick scroll facility. A long-press anywhere on the remaining left-most 80% of the blue background will scroll to the top of the index. Note: This fast scroll facility is not available if the Allow heading line to be highlighted option (described below) has been selected.
The indexes also allow the use of browser access keys which vary between browsers, but is typically Alt+key or Alt+Shift+key (note that Firefox uses Alt+Shift+key), where key is the initial letter of the entry to scroll the page to, so Alt+S (or Alt+Shift+S) will scroll to entries beginning with the letter S. If there are no entries beginning with this letter, the next letter alphabetically will be shown. Note that some browsers assign specific access keys to access their own menus.
This lists all the dances in the archive.
Each entry is split into two parts: The left part gives the name of the dance and the artist. Clicking on this will play or display the contents referred to. The right part is the album name, and clicking on this takes you to the specific page for this album. Leaving the cursor over an album name for a second or more will display the track number of the dance in this album.
Playing a music track from the Dance Index will normally display minimal infomation about the track. More information (where available) will be displayed by selecting Play track via album from the options setup menu and a player other than the default Browser player.
Documentation (typically dance notes) is marked with a “¶”, music (notation) is marked with a “♬”, song lyrics are marked with a “♪” and video is marked with a “∨”. Otherwise the item is a piece of music (audio).
Some dances in the archive are known under different names or different spellings and any additional varients of a name are marked with a “≡”.
The index shows an alphabet at the start of dance names with each succesive alphabetic letter and clicking on a letter will scroll the page to entries beginning with that letter.
As with the album indexes, the browser search facility may be used to seach for a specific term, the Ctrl-Home or Ctrl-End keys may be used to scroll to the start or end of the index and the browser access keys used to scroll to a specific initial letter. Similarly, the long-press fast scroll facility may be used to scroll to a desired point or the top of the index.
If there are any user defined playlists available, there will also be a a menu item to display a list of these playlists. This list has buttons to play, edit or delete the playlists. Playlists may be created as described below.
Swipe the header line at the top of a page, either from right-to-left or left-to-right to return to the previous page. To do this with a mouse, left-click on the header line, drag the mouse left or right and release. Of course, the normal browser back button (or the mouse back button on some mice) will also do this. You can try this on the header line of this page!
To select certain options use a double-click on the header line of an album. Generally the default settings allow the archive to be used in a basic fashion but selecting non-default options enhances the usability of the archive depending on personal preferences.
If any options are changed, click the “Set and return” button at the bottom of the settings page or swipe/drag the header line to store the settings and return to the previous page. The settings will not be stored if the browser back button is used.
The options are stored in the browser “localStorage” or in a cookie. Browser “localStorage” is supported by many modern browsers and will be used where available. Where this is not available, cookies will be used but note that the browser may be configured not to accept cookies and also that some browsers do not support the use of cookies when browsing local files such as those on the USB Stick.
Selecting the setup options from a video album will show a different set of options that are specific to controlling the video player.
If the setup option to Allow heading line to be highlighted has been selected, it is possible to select all or part of the text of the header line of an album for copy-and-paste. Press on the header line (left-click, hold for more than 1/2 a second and release), then highlight the desired text (mouse left-click, drag over the text, then release), and then either press Ctrl-C or right-click and select copy. Another press on the header line restores the action of using left or right swipe to return to the previous page.
Any changed options are set automatically in the page that was used to initiate the selection of options, but other pages (such as on other browser tabs) may need to be refreshed before the options will take effect.
If the text size used for indexes is too small, use the options setup menu to change the font size by clicking on the "Use larger font" button. Each time this button is clicked the font size will be increased by 5%. The default size is 1em.
Click on the name of a item of music to play it. This will normally use the player built-in to your browser which will show you a progress bar and give you controls to pause or play the music. Some browsers will also provide a volume control or mute button.
The music will normally start playing immediately, but it may be useful to use the options setup menu to specify a Play start delay time (defined in tenths of a seconds, so a value of 40 will delay 4 seconds) before the music will start to play.
Right click on the item of music and select “save as” (the exact words may vary between browsers, for example, Firefox shows this as "save link as"). This allows a copy of the music to be stored in a folder of your choosing, which can, for example, be used to build up a playlist of music. Similarly, dragging the item of music to another folder, will create a link (rather than a true copy) to the piece of music. Note that this link references the copy of the music on the USB Stick, and will therefore only be usable when the USB Stick is plugged-in (and assigned the same drive letter).
Here are a couple of pieces of music to try:
Other music players may be selected by using the options setup menu. These are the HTML5 player, the Soundmanager 2 player or the Wavesurfer player.
The HTML5 player uses the music player introduced in HTML version 5 and displays some additional information about the track being played (where available). The player has buttons to pause (if playing) or play (if paused), restart from the beginning, play the first 10 seconds (as an introduction), return to the previous page, and skip to the previous or next track. The player displays a progress bar that may be used to skip to part-way through the track by clicking on it at the desired point on the bar.
The Soundmanager 2 player additionally displays a bolder progress bar which may be seen from a distance.
The Wavesurfer player additionally displays the waveform for the track which might be useful to identify starts of repeats or other specific points in the track. (Note that the Wavesurfer player may only work with certain browsers such as Firefox and may be slow to render the waveform on low specification machines).
(The previous and next track buttons in these player examples will return to this page).
The speed of audio playback may be varied when using one of the non-default players (the HTML5 player, the Soundmanager 2 player or the Wavesurfer player). This must firstly be enabled in the options setup menu by selecting the Audio speed control enabled button.
Once the speed control is enabled in settings, the players will display a Speed control button that when clicked will show a speed slider and various selection buttons. Moving the slider left or right will vary the playback speed. Additionally, the first group of selection buttons allows for the speed to be decreased or increased in either 2 or 5 percent increments. The Normal speed button will restore the audio back to its normal speed. The second group of buttons change the range of values that the slider displays.
The Hide speed button will hide the audio speed control but will maintain the same speed setting. If the speed is faster or slower than normal the button text will show the current setting.
Note that some browsers may exhibit audio glitches as the speed is varied.
Clicking on the name of a piece of music in a music album plays the selected music and then stops. To play all the music in a music album, there is a link to play all the tracks of the album at the end of the list of music. Clicking on this takes you to the playlist which will start playing the first item automatically, and then play each item sequentially.
This will normally use the HTML5 playlist player unless changed in the options setup.
The music playing will have a pause symbol
() against it.
Other items of music will have a play symbol
()
against them and clicking on one of these will play that item instead.
Clicking on the playing item will pause it.
The HTML5 playlist player, lists all the tracks of the album. The player has buttons to pause (if playing) or play (if paused), restart from the beginning, return to the previous page, skip to the previous or next track and edit track list. The player has a progress bar that may be used to skip to part-way through the track by clicking on it at the desired point on the bar.
The Soundmanager 2 playlist player additionally displays a bolder progress bar which may be seen from a distance.
The Wavesurfer playlist player additionally displays the waveform for the track which might be useful to identify starts of repeats or other specific points in the track. (Note that the Wavesurfer player may only work with certain browsers such as Firefox and may be slow to render the waveform on low specification machines).
It is also possible to select the use of an external playlist player, such as Winamp,
that supports the use of a .m3u
playlist file.
However, the playlist players listed above will generally be preferred.
This is very similar to the playlist player page, but initially the first track will be paused and the name (or the first part of it, if it is long) of the track will appear in buttons with up and down arrows, both above and below the track list. Clicking on any other track will cause the name of the selected track to appear in these buttons (and will also be paused). Clicking on these buttons will caused the named track to move up or down in the list.
Up and down arrows are also shown to the left of each track and will move the adjacent track up or down. Also shown to the left of each track is a delete (Del) button which will cause the corresponding track name to be striked-out. A second click on the delete button will remove the strike-out. Any tracks that are striked-out will not be played as part of the playlist.
The edited playlist can be played either by clicking on a paused track (in which case this track and any subsequent tracks will be played), or by clicking the play track list button which switches to the playlist player page and plays all tracks from the start of the playlist.
As an example for you to try, here is the HTML5 playlist edit page.
You can build your own playlists of music items in the archive. These are similar to the Music album playlists but can contain references to tracks from one or more albums.
To use user defined playlists, the option to Store playing track information/playlists in cookies/localStorage (or either of the options using WebDAV) must be selected in the options setup menu.
Once this is selected, an additional option Log played album track history in daily playlist or, Log played album/playlist track history in daily playlist may be selected. If selected, any track played to completion will be added to a playlist with the current date. This playlist will be listed along with any other user-defined playlists in the playlist pull-down.
Any of the music players (other than the Browser player, or the m3u playlist player) will now include a Show playlist and Show information button when a track is played.
Clicking the Show information button will display a new window with the information for the current track. This will change automatically when another track is played.
Clicking the Show playlist button will add a line of buttons to allow playlists to be defined (and the button will change to Hide playlist).
If there are no playlists initially, this will show input fields for the short (maximum of 16 characters) name of a playlist, such as “Sunday dance” and a longer description such as “Dances for Sunday 5th” and two buttons to either create an empty playlist of this name or to include the current track.
If there are already playlists, buttons to add the current track to the selected playlist, or to play, edit or delete it are shown. Finally, there is a pull-down to change the selected playlist and this includes a last entry of “New…” to allow a new playlist to be created. The Add current track button will only add the current track once, and subsequent uses will be ignored to prevent the track being duplicated in the playlist.
The Play button will play tracks from the selected playlist and is identical to the music album playlist described above.
The Edit button allows the playlist to be edited, again as described above. If any tracks are duplicated, a Delete Duplicates button will be displayed next to the move up and move down buttons. An additional line of buttons is also displayed to allow the playlist to be manipulated. Save will save the displayed tracks (excluding any that have been struck-out) as the playlist named in the pull-down alongside the button. Append to and Append to (w/o dups) will append the displayed tracks to the named playlist (either allowing duplicates or with the elimination of duplicates). Append from will add the tracks from the named playlist to the displayed list. Edit will show the named playlist and allow it to be edited, and Zip will create a zip file (as a download) with the contents of the playlist (including the full music files listed by the playlist) that can saved and the contents used with other music programs, CD burners or transferred to other devices. (Note that not all browsers support this. The Firefox browser supports it correctly, but the Chrome browser requires the --allow-file-access-from-files flag to enable it to work).
The Delete button will delete the playlist (but note that this does NOT delete any of the music files listed by the playlist!).
A pop-up will be displayed to ask you to confirm that the playlist is to be deleted.
Note that the Edge browser that is usually the default browser in Windows 10 does not currently support the localStorage mechanism that user defined playlists use. The archive will attempt to use regular cookie storage but this is very limited and generally, if you wish to create your own playlist if is suggested that you use the recommended Firefox browser which has full support.
Also note that the additional input/output activity that is required to manipulate playlists may cause disruption to music playback resulting in slight glitches in the music.
Most music and video albums have one or more thumbnail pictures of the artwork (such as the front cover of a CD) that are associated with that album. Documentation albums that contain dance notes, music notation, or lyrics consist of a series of pictures (usually stored as jpgs). To see the picture in the full browser window, just click on the picture thumbnail (for music or video albums) or the name of the desired dance notes, music notation, or lyrics (for documentation albums). Click again on the picture to return to the album view. If the picture does not fill the browser window, click on the blue border and it will expand to fill the window (but the image quality may be reduced!).
If there are two or more pictures, swipe (mouse left-click, drag and release) to the right to display the next picture, or to the left to display the previous picture. A swipe left on the first, or right on the last picture will return to the album view.
A press (mouse left-click, hold for more than 1/2 a second and release) on a picture will allow drag-and-drop on the picture, or a right-click to select copy (to clipboard) or save image. Another press will return to the left and right swipe capability.
The direction of the swipes may be reversed in the setup options (accessed as described above).
An upwards diagonal swipe (mouse left-click, drag up diagonally and release) will invoke the browser print facility. Some browsers will show a preview before sending the picture to the printer, but Firefox, for example, will only show a minimal print dialog. (If available, select the print preview option in your printer setup menus to avoid wasting paper).
Here are three pictures to try:
Documentation albums contain a mixture of pictures (typically images of dances notes or music), or multi-page PDFs where the original album is a book, leaflet or newsletter. In some cases, a multi-page PDF is presented as a set of separate pictures to allow quick access to information of interest, such as a particular dance.
The display of PDFs is dependent on the browser, but most will either require the installation of Adobe Reader or may include their own PDF display mechanism.
The display of pictures supports the same swipes as described above.
A video album will show the video at the top of the album list. Click on the video to pause or restart the video. If there are multiple chapters in the video, a swipe (mouse left-click, drag and release) to the right will select the next chapter and a swipe to the left will select the previous chapter. A swipe left when playing the first chapter will return to the start of the video as will a swipe right when playing the last chapter.
Scroll down the video album to see the full list of chapters. A click on the name of the chapter will scroll the page back to the top and play from that chapter. Clicking along or dragging the end of the progress bar displayed at the bottom of the video an also be used to move forward or back in the video.
Here is a video album to try:
This window displays the current playing track information. It is updated automatically to keep the information in sync whenever a new track is played.
A single click on this window cycles between six display formats. The second three display formats are the same as the first three, but include a track progress bar at the bottom. A long press reverses the foregound and background colours. A double click will display the options setup menu including the option to set the foreground and background colours used by this window.
The information window can be displayed either by clicking on the Show information button on a player page or by running the dmlshow.html script in the same browser as is being used to explore the archive.
The SIFD Archive can be mounted on a suitable web server which confers various benefits such as being able to access the archive on a device that does not have a suitable USB socket.
This is more comprehensively discussed in this separate document.
WebDAV is supported when the archive is hosted on a suitable web server and is used by the archive as a means of remote storage of cookie data.
This is described in the WebDAV documentation which explains how playlists can be shared between machines or how a dance information screen can be displayed an a separate machine. This also explains how the cross-domain support can be used to do this even if the dance information is to be displayed on a machine on a different domain.