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Windows Media Player Info |
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External Player |
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Launching the external Windows Media Player for your streaming media is easy.
Simply reference an ASF Stream Redirector file (ASX). An ASX file is an
extensible Markup Language (XML) based text file which references a Uniform
Resource Locator (URL) for a piece of media content.
There are two reasons that and ASX file must be used for the stand alone
player:
- Browsers other than Microsoft® Internet Explorer do not automatically
know that the Microsoft Media Server (MMS)streaming protocol.
Without an ASX file, content cannot stream to the media player. When you
click on a link in a browser, that file is downloaded to the browser's
cache. When, however, you click on a reference to an ASX, the ASX (which is
a very small download) gets downloaded into the cache, and then launches the
helper application associated with the ASX MIME type (application/mplayer2
or video/x-ms-asf), which is the Windows Media Player. This, of course,
saves download time and takes advantage of intelligent media serving
technology.
To reference an ASX file, simply add the following code to your Web page:
<A HREF="http://webserver/path/sample.asx">Link to Sample
Content</A>
The browser will open this file and then launch the Windows Media Player
to play this content.
Here is the Basic syntax for an ASX file:
<ASX version = "3.0">
<ENTRY>
<AUTHOR>your name here</AUTHOR>
<COPYRIGHT>any copywrite information here</COPYRIGHT>
<REF HREF = "mms://server/path/sample.asf" />
</ENTRY>
</ASX>
*Note: ASF files on your media server are not usually kept in the
same location as your HTML documents.
Browser/Platform Compatibility and other Requirements
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Since ASXs work through the Windows Media Player helper application, they
are compatible with any browser that supports helper applications. This
sample will work with Internet Explorer 4.0 and greater, and Netscape
Navigator 4.0 and greater on the Win32 and Mac platforms.
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