Creating a Chicklet-Sized MP3 Player

I know there are a bunch of MP3 players out there that are WordPress compatible. None of them suits my needs so I am going to roll my own. I could really use some advice so I move in the right direction.

I’d like this player to tiny: the exact size of the iTunes chicklet I currently have on Vegan.com. It will support just three functions: play, pause, and dragging the thumb backwards or forwards in the audio.

I suppose the only way to build such an animal is to create it in Flash, correct?

Which brings me to my main question: can I just make this thing a plugin, and call it within a regular text widget, just like I’ve embedded my iTunes chicklet? I’m thinking the plugin would have an edit setting where I could simply paste in my podcast’s RSS feed (or the URL of an MP3 file). When you click the play button on this widget, it would automatically pull off the latest podcast and start playing it.

So, is all of this sensible: create the chicklet in Flash, then convert it to a WordPress Plugin. And would it in fact be embeddable through XHTML in a text widget? Or am I going to be stuck converting this plugin into a widget? I’m really new to this, so I’d appreciate any opinions or advice on what I’m planning to do.