A Complete Guide to Web Design

340 Chapter 19 – Audio on the Web

Nonstreaming (Static) Audio

Web Design in a Nutshell, eMatter Edition

align=left|right

hspace=number

vspace=number

These attributes allow the console to be positioned against the left or right

margin (with horizontal and vertical gutter space) and allows text to wrap

around it. These work the same as within the<img> tag.

starttime=minutes:seconds

Supported only by Mac, Windows 95, and NT.Specifies at what point in the

audio file the playback should begin.

endtime=minutes:seconds

Supported only by Mac, Windows 95 and NT.Specifies at what point in the

audio file the playback should end. Minutes and seconds are indicated with

two digits (e.g., 02:15 for 2 minutes, 15 seconds).

mastersound

Indicates which<embed>element contains the link to the audio file. Required

when grouping audio controls (using the NAME attribute).

NAME=text

This is used to group individual controls for use with a single audio file.

Background sound

There are several ways (mostly browser-specific) to make an audio file start

playing automatically when a web page loads. Note that the disadvantage of using

background sounds is that the user has no way of turning the sound off if she

does not like it. Also, if it is a large file, you are forcing a potentially lengthy

download on the user.

• For Internet Explorer 2.0+ (no other browsers support this tag) use the tag, as follows:
  
  wheresrcgives the URL for the audio file andloopis the number of times
  you want the audio to play (this attribute can be set to “infinite”). WAVE,
  AIFF, and MIDI sound files can be played as background sounds using this
  method.
  


• To set a background sound that will work with both Netscape Navigator and
  Internet Explorer, use a combination of the background sound tag and an tag that hides the control panel, as follows:
  
  <BGSOUND="audio/song.mid">
  


• For Netscape Navigator and later versions of MSIE, you can make audio play
  automatically with client-pull by using the tag as follows:
  which causes the page to refresh (and the audio to play) after 1 second.