I think we best give up, Acorn. Just to give you an insight into the level of my ignorance I will respond to the first few instructions you gave me in your Xara file link:

How to add the Player to your Design
• Copy the Player & one Track to your design

What Design? Do I create a design in Xara and save it as a Xara file? What is ‘the Player’? Is it the rounded edge grey cylinder shaped graphic you have in your Xara file that you gave me a link to? How do I copy it ‘to’ a design? I drew a simple design in Xara and when I copy-pasted your player graphic to the design, the player replaced the design: erased it. Is your rounded edged cylinder thing with the play button the ‘design’? How do I copy a track to the design?

• Save your design

You mean save as a Xara file? You mean save the design along with the track and the Player that are supposed at this point to be copied to it?

How to add a Track
• Create a Box
• In Web properties > Placeholder link to your MP3 with Replace with graphic file

I made a box then I got the web properties window open and selected ‘Replace with Graphic File’, but I don’t know how to link this with an MP3. When I tried clicking the browse tab and directing it to the MP3 file it says “No items match your search”.

• Press Open & Apply

I can’t see the ‘Open’ tab/option.

• Copy the saved filename

What ‘filename’ are we referring to here? The design file? The MP3 track file? A Xara file?

Of course none of the instructions that follow will make any sense until the preceding instructions are realized.

I did try your alternative suggestion of removing class="xar_meplayer" in the code entry and Save, but as you said, this makes the player appear differently depending on which browser displays it.
For the moment my best workaround solution is to draw over the black parts of the player (it is the black colour I don’t like, not the player design itself) but not to draw over the parts that will be clicked on: the play/pause arrow, the volume bar, etc. I find that it works in preview mode as long as I don’t turn the shapes that I drew into a Group. If I group the shapes the player doesn’t respond to mouse clicks in preview mode. A Soft Group works okay.

Thanks for trying with me; at least you now know how stupid I am.