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AW Meyer
Jan-06-2009, 2:12pm
Whenever I try to open one of the mp3 files that users insert in their posts, all I get is gibberish text. My mp3 player (windows media) doesn't open. The mp3s on the Café's mp3 page work fine. The problem occurs when someone posts an mp3. What am I missing here?:confused:

Bob Wiegers
Jan-06-2009, 2:25pm
are you using firefox by any chance? I'm on chrome and it does the same thing. try right-click and "Save Link As" and see if that helps

Mike Buesseler
Jan-06-2009, 2:53pm
I'm on a Mac, but this might work for other computers as well. Save the file to your desktop, then click on it and delete the ".html" file extension (assuming that's what you get, like I did....).

ApK
Jan-06-2009, 2:54pm
The files on the .mp3 page are linked in a different way than the file attachments in messages.

It's not a matter of which browser.

Off the top of my head, IIRC:
When you link directly to an mp3 file, like on the mp3 page, the browser displays it with whatever plug in is setup in that browser. That's working for you.
When the file downloaded as an attachment, as it is in the message attachments, the browser can be configured to save the file or to try to open it with the OS's registered apps. That's not working for you.

So, in your operating system, see what app is set to handle mp3 files, and try resetting it.
If you're in Windows, that's in Tools|Folder Options|File Types from a regular folder window.

ApK

Bob Wiegers
Jan-06-2009, 3:14pm
sorry ApK, but it does behave differently in different browsers for me. for some reason Chrome (which shares most of the guts of Firefox) wants to download the mp3 files with a .html appended (as Mike says above). not sure why, but I assume there's a easier workaround out there.

ApK
Jan-06-2009, 3:25pm
That's very weird. I use Firefox and have never seen that.
Could it be that somehow you got mp3 files reset to be handled as text/html mime type?

It seems that if that's the case for you, you'd have to rename it if you saved it, like Mike does, too?

I see in Tools|Options|applications that I have two entries for MP3...one for my sound player and one that says it's text/html. What do you have?

ApK

CajunPicker
Jan-06-2009, 3:26pm
Bob,
It does that because of what he said. Some browsers can easily adapt to it, but others have to be set. The easiest thing to do is just download the file, rename it without the .html. For example, file name 1234.mp3.html would be renamed to 1234.mp3.

CajunPicker
Jan-06-2009, 3:28pm
It just occurred to me that there could be another resolution. Right-click on the file and "open with" Windows Media player. There is probably a check box to tell it to do that everytime.