I'm hoping you can help me with this problem. I have created my homepage (http://www.21century.com.au/macca) and have built in a MIDI file for listening pleasure. This is where the problem begins. If the browser is running Internet Explorer you can listen to the music automatically. However, if the browser of choice is Netscape Navigator then there is no sound at all. How do I solve this problem?
The other question I have is this. How do I attach a font to my page so that the viewer can see it with the correct font? Or can I post the page in such a way that it doesn't matter what fonts the viewer has?
- Mark McArthur
In the <HEAD> section of your HTML document, include the following line: <META Http-equiv="refresh" Content="0; Url=SONG.MID">. Once the document has loaded it will automatically jump to the listed URL, which in this case is a MIDI file called song.mid. In Netscape 3.0, a separate Media Player window is launched, while Internet Explorer 3.0 launches the Windows 95 MIDI Player program. This isn't strictly speaking playing the song in the background, but it does have the advantage of giving the listener the option of stopping the music if they don't like it.
When developing Web pages you have to spend a little time thinking about how people are going to go about reading them. People use different browsers on different platforms. Even with the same browser and platform people may have different configurations. Many people are still using older versions of browsers. How many megabytes is the latest version of Netscape? If your page conforms to the HTML 2 standard then you are almost assured that the person can view it as intended. HTML 3 is fairly widespread now, and many of the HTML 3 extensions will not cause an adverse result if the browser does not support them. Most of Netscape's innovations are supported by other browsers, but the Internet Explorer extensions are generally ignored by other browsers, especially Netscape. This is why the <BGSOUND> command did not play background music. Similarly, setting the font type will only apply to Internet Explorer as it is an extension specific to this browser.
- Roy Chambers
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Category: Internet, Multimedia
Issue: May 1997
Pages: 151
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Music while you browse