First, you need to upload your sound files to your file directory. Then you need to insert the HTML tags to play the sounds or music when visitors come to your page. You can set the tags up so you can have the music automatically begin or the visitor can start it. To have it so the visitor can control the playing it is necessary to have either a console or an Icon where the visitor can access the controls.
Because Netscape and MSIE browsers require different tags for earlier versions of browsers (pre-ver. 4.0) you need to include tags which will facilitate as many versions as possible.
The tags which you should insert into your document are:
The above tags can be use for .mid, .wav or .au by substituting the appropriate format file. Also, in the given tags the sound is set to "play automatically and loop." The height and width dimensions given will cause a small Icon to be placed on the document page where the user can "right-click" and obtain a control menu for turning the sound "on and off" (basic level using the Windows mediaplayer) or if the user's browser has a plugin, they can have access to many other controls over the sound. There are other controls which may be used and information pertaining to them may be found in an Advanced HTML Tutorial or at the site of various "sound plugins" availble for use with your browser.
An explanation of the attributes within the tags is as follows:
The "autostart" can be set to true to start the sound automatically or can be set to false so the user must initiate the sound.
The loop can be set to true or false in the <embed> tag or infinite or false in the <bgsound> tag to control the looping. In both tags the looping can be a numeric value to establish the number of "loops" the sound will make. To make the sound play completely only ONE time just DELETE the LOOP attribute from the tags.
The <noembed> and </noembed> tags are added to keep the <embed> tag from confusing browsers which do not use it.
There are other attributes which can be added to the sound tags for more control. The addition of the attribute hidden=true will cause the "control" to be hidden. The attribute volume=XX% will set the amount of volume.
(Note: in both the "hiding" and "volume" attributes it is usually good NOT to include them unless absolutely necessary. Most people like to be able to turn the sounds on/off and most visitors like to control their volume themselves. If the volume you set is too low some people may miss the sounds completely because they normally operate their browsers with the sound turned DOWN.)
For ALL Netscape browsers and IE ver 4.0+ I recommend using the "Crescendo" plugin for sound/music. The use of this plugin "enhances" the "quality" of the sound. To obtain the appropriate PLUGIN for your browser go to Crescendo.
For information about installing HTML in your pages to take FULL advantage of the Crescendo PLUGIN go to Crescendo Authoring where you can learn about the various SIZES and Types of Crescendo CONTROLS you can make available to visitors. Most of the sizes will apply for ALL types of plugins and sound helpers.
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