Voiceover




Voiceoverme one


Voiceoverme two



I don't get it. What is a voiceover?

A voiceover is a sound you get when hovering the mouse over an element in a website. Try it out yourself above. If you don't get sound, you don't have flash, you are using Internet Explorer or your speakers are switched off. If you are using Internet Explorer, get Firefox.

What do I need this for?

E.g. for building tutorials for web applications: instead of bothersome popups explaining stuff the user doesn't want to read, just tell him what objects are for when he voiceovers with his mouse. E.g. for band websites who want to include voiceover intros to the songs on there website. E.g. think of something yourself.

How does it work?

You include my lib in your site and onmouseover you call Voiceover.Mp3.play(mp3_file); the javascript then creates a sizeless flash mp3 player playing your mp3_file. Call Voiceover.Mp3.stop() on onmouseout, and the player will be stopped.

Is the whole thing yours?

I did the javascript, the flash mp3 player is from musicplayer.sourceforge.net.

Which browsers are supported?

More or less all browsers with flash support should work. I tested the lib with Firefox, Opera and Konqueror and I've been told, Safari works, too. Oh, I've been told, Internet Explorer doesn't. Sorry folks, my Linux box doesn't allow me to develop for Internet Explorer. But if someone is willing to contribute back a fix for ie I will update the lib.

Can I use this freely?

Yes. Just have to agree to the BSD like licences of musicplayer and voiceover. More or less they allow you to use, modify and distribute voiceover freely in binary form or source code, as long as you deliver the licenses and copyright notes. Commercial use is allowed as well. Of cource I would be happy, if you drop me a line, if you are using it ;-)

I want Voiceover, too! What do I have to do?

  1. Download and extract the voiceover.tar.gz
  2. Agree to the BSD-like licence of musicplayer and upload musicplayer.swf to your server.
  3. Agree to the BSD-like licence of voiceover, adopt the line 
    objectNode.setAttribute('data',   'http://yourserver.com/musicplayer.swf?&autoplay=true&song_url=' + mp3_file + '&" ');
    in the voiceover.js and upload voiceover.js to your server.
  4. Write your website.
  5. Record the descriptions you want to hear when voiceovering your website and upload them to your server.
  6. Adopt and include the following line into the header of your site:
    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://yourserver.com/voiceover.js"></script>
  7. Adopt and include the following attributes to any voiceover element: 
    onmouseover="Voiceover.Mp3.play('http://yourserver.com/yourvoiceover.mp3');" onmouseout="Voiceover.Mp3.stop();"

What did you do this for?

For cyclr.com.

How can I contact you?

Write to "voiceover at golega dot de".