Frequently Asked Questions

Q. WHAT IS LITE MODE AND DARK MODE?

A. "Lite Mode" uses a white background with black text. "Dark Mode" uses a black background with white text.

To the user, there is little difference between the two displays. Dark mode may take a while to feel comfortable.

LITE MODE: The main advantage is that the display is in a format that is familiar to the user, black text on a white page. The disadvantage is the bright glare of the screen in a dark room.

DARK MODE: The main advantage is the lower battery usage in OLED types of displays. LCD and most other displays use a backlight that has every pixel lit up with an intermediate LCD screen that blocks the backlight where a dark pixel is to be displayed. OLED displays only light the pixels that are to be displayed, thus in "Dark Mode", most of the pixels are turned off, resulting in much less battery usage. Another advantage of Dark Mode is in a dim room, the screen is mostly dark, reducing glare.

Q. PLAY BUTTON WON'T PLAY THE TUNE

A. To play the song, the app uses the "Web Audio API." This must be enabled in the browser.


FIREFOX:
Navigate to any song, press the Play button. Both the Play and Stop buttons turn orange.
1) In the browser's address bar, enter "about:config" (don't type quotes)
2) In the search line, enter "dom.webaudio" (don't type quotes)
3) The value for dom.webaudio.enabled will display false, press "Reset" (or "Toggle")
4) The value for dom.webaudio.enabled will display true. This is the desired state.
5) Press the back button (left-pointing arrow at top), repeat until the song displays.
6) Refresh the browser (use the circle arrow at the top).
7) Try it, it should work.



Q. HOW DO I ADJUST THE SCREEN BRIGHTNESS?

A. Background: The white on black scheme was chosen because the music is readable even at low brightness levels. Battery life is much longer at the low brightness level, and this works well indoors and in low light. Unfortunately, outside in the sun, the display washes out. Increasing the brightness will make it more readable and will decrease battery life. It is recommended that you normally keep this at half light.

There are a couple of ways to change the brightness:
1. HOME, SWIPE & CHANGE
1A. Go to your home page by pressing the home button (or the house icon on the bottom of the screen).
1B. Swipe the screen to the right. Keep going until you see the brightness icon (a little sun that is dark, half light, or full light). Press the sun icon until you are satisfied with the brightness.
1C. Press home button

2. APPS
2A. Find the apps icon (a rectangle of 2x3 dots), or pull down the menu from the top and select apps.
2B. Select the "Settings" icon.
2C. Select "Display".
2D. Select "Brightness".
2E. Set your desired brightness by swiping the control right (or left to dim), press "OK".
2F. Press home button.


Q. CAN I ADD SONGS?

A. The short answer is no.
A slightly longer answer is that the SongBuddy App lives in a browser environment.

To keep evil sites from infecting your device with viruses, browsers are prevented from accessing your storage to load evil programs to support their evil doings. The theory is that one of these evil programs could take over the browser and with access to storage could do evil things.

An even longer term answer is that we are considering a future version of SongBuddy that will let, even encourage, you to load your own songs into its system. Of course, you would be responsible for insuring that the file you load into the system is not an evildoer, and we would help by restricting the types of files that could be loaded.


Q. HOW DO I SEARCH FOR A SONG:
I know one word in the title, how do I find it?

First, try the Key Word Index, this will handle 90% of your searches. If you can't find it in the Key Word Index, go to the Master Index and use the browser's "Find" function.

A. FIREFOX: the Find function is a standard feature of the browser.
1. Select on the menu icon (three horizontal lines, usually in the upper left corner).
2. Select the Find icon (usually a magnifying glass).
3. Press the next (v) or previous (^) arrows to step through the matches.

A. MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER: The Find function is a standard feature of the browser.
1. Select the "cog" in the top right corner of the window.
2. Select the "File >" entry.
3. Select the "Find on this Page" entry.
4. Type your search in the Find: box.
5. Press the "Previous" or "Next" buttons to step through the matches.

A. MICROSOFT EDGE: The Find function is a standard feature of the browser.
1. Select the "More" (three dots) in the top right corner of the window.
2. Select the "Find on Page" entry.
3. Type your search in the Find on page box.
4. Press the next (v) or previous (^) arrows to step through the matches.


MULTIPLE TABS and OTHER SQUIRRELLY STUFF
Q. My browser keeps multiple tabs open and frequently opens in a song.

A. FIREFOX on Android: Set the browser so it won't restore tabs at startup.
1. Select options icon (three vertical dots, usually in the upper right corner).
2. Select Settings
3. Select Advanced
4. Tap "Restore Tabs" to toggle to "Don't restore after quitting"


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