Help designing website

[MickeySox]

Guys,

 

This is my first post here so hello to all, and thanks in advance for any help you might give me now and in the future.

 

I would like to build a music player for my first website, sounds easy enough, however I would like to replicate iTunes functionality and look! I've never built anything on this scale before but I don't think I will have a problem with the coding etc as I know how to read the manual!

 

So I guess my question is this.  Where would I even begin on such a project?  I'm looking for help in terms of a design perspective rather than a coding one.  Is it even possible? How would I store the music to stream? What things do I need to take into consideration etc

 

A project like this has probably been undertaken but this is something I am attempting for my own personal satisfaction.  My audience would be a close group of friends and this will not be made public.

 

Are there any vet web designers who could possibly help me to ask the right questions, and get me thinking along the correct lines?

 

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

Thanks

 

Michael

 

P.S Let me just clarify what functionality I would like to replicate.  I would like to replicate the browse functions of iTunes so have 3 boxes with Genre, Artist, Album and then below that have the actual songs, which when clicked will play.

 

 

 

 

[Revlet]

Your best bet is to go with flash and have the music library stored in an XML file.

 

Since you want a iTunes replica I would suggest just getting SWiSH Jukebox which has around 30 different customizable players and one of them looks identical to an iTunes mini player.

 

 

http://www.swishzone.com/index.php?area=products&product=jukebox

 

 

 

Hope that helps,

Revlet

[ignace]

Ok i'm going to give you the full lowdown on this one. First you need to make some sort of requirements list as you are creating it for yourself you can keep it to functional requirements a functional requirement may be:

 

- An article cannot be published until it is reviewed and approved by an editor

- or a product cannot be purchased until an email address is given

 

Once you have these functional requirements for your iTunes store you separate your project into two groups, both teams will adhere to the requirements one team called the webdesign team will create a flowchart (http://www.backe.com/images/web.gif) This identifies all the pages within your website then for each page you create a so-called wireframe which documents the structure of the page (http://www.gliffy.com/examples/wireframes/images/wireframe_example.png) After this is done you create a template using Photoshop or some other image editing software. The design team is done at this point. The second team the webdevelopment team will based on the requirements build an erd (http://www.cbe.wwu.edu/misclasses/mis431s05/431code%5CSCR-SO-ERD.gif) and a class diagram (http://www.codeproject.com/KB/library/WinSNMPWrapper/class_diagram.png) maybe even a state diagram or a data flow diagram.

 

With all functionality documented you can now write your very first lines of code after all classes on the class diagram have been implemented and all templates have been turned into functional html pages you proceed to the next phase: Quality Assurance This is where you test your code by using Selenium (http://seleniumhq.org/  - webdesign) and Unit Testing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_testing  - webdevelopment)

[semlabs]

This has been done repeatedly in Flash and also in JS with a Flash API. See: http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager/