Page 15 (extras) : Embedding sound files

Provided you have the necessary Netscape plugins, you can embed sound files into Web pages so that they play in the background, rather than being linked to and being played within another Netscape window or by a helper application.

If you want to know more about Netscape plugins, go back and look at Page 13 again.

If you can hear a sound playing in the background while you are reading this page, you know that you have the appropriate plugin installed. Do you recognise the tune? Have you seen the Lion King?

If you are using the Crescendo plugin, there will be a control panel at the bottom of this page that you can use to stop, fast forward or rewind the sound file. If you click on the Crescendo icon, it will take you to their Web site, where you can find out lots more information.

The tag used to embed the sound file on this page is:

<EMBED SRC="sounds/hakuna.mid" HEIGHT=50 WIDTH=200 AUTOSTART=true LOOP=true>

Attribute Description
SRC="URL" The path to the sound file needs to be specified within the double quotes.
HEIGHT=n WIDTH=n These two attributes can be left out. If included, it specifies the size of the image that will be inserted for the Crescendo control panel, where n represents the size in pixels. If Netscape does not have the Crescendo plugin installed, it will leave a gap. If you leave out these two attributes and the Crescendo plugin is installed, you will get the Crescendo icon as the default image, rather than the whole control panel.
AUTOSTART=true|false Best to set this as true so that the sound file automatically starts when the page is loaded. This means that people not using the Crescendo plugin will not be disadvantaged as they will have no way of starting the sound file without the Crescendo control panel.
LOOP=true|false Setting this to true or false will decide whether the sound file is played once or continuously.

Attribute	Description
SRC="URL"	The path to the sound file needs to be specified within the double quotes.
HEIGHT=n WIDTH=n	These two attributes can be left out. If included, it specifies the size of the image that will be inserted for the Crescendo control panel, where n represents the size in pixels. If Netscape does not have the Crescendo plugin installed, it will leave a gap. If you leave out these two attributes and the Crescendo plugin is installed, you will get the Crescendo icon as the default image, rather than the whole control panel.
AUTOSTART=true\|false	Best to set this as true so that the sound file automatically starts when the page is loaded. This means that people not using the Crescendo plugin will not be disadvantaged as they will have no way of starting the sound file without the Crescendo control panel.
LOOP=true\|false	Setting this to true or false will decide whether the sound file is played once or continuously.

The EMBED tag needs to be located where you want the Crescendo control panel to appear.

You may have noticed by now that embedding sounds into Web pages can be pretty annoying if the user has that page on their screen for a long period of time, which is why the stop button on the Crescendo control panel comes in very handy!!