Using Multimedia on Web Pages

See Also: Streaming Multimedia

Adding sound to your web page

With FrontPage 2003, you can embed an audio file and set properties to play when site visitors open the page. You can set the properties to play the sound file continuously, or to play it a specified number of times.

Another way to add sound to your Web page is to provide a hyperlink to the audio file from your page and let site visitors decide if they want to play the sound. When site visitors click that link, the appropriate audio player opens and plays the sound file.

In Page view, at the bottom of the document window, click Design .
Right-click the page, and then click Page Properties on the shortcut menu.
On the General tab, under Background sound, locate and click the sound file you want, and then click Open.

Important: Some sound file formats, such as .mp3 files, are not displayed in the dialog box. For these files, you must manually type the path of the sound file in the dialog box. For example, if a file that is named Song.mp3 is stored in a folder that is named Music, this is how the path looks: Music/Song.mp3. If the file is located in the root, this is how the the path looks: Song.mp3

Do one of the following:

To play the sound continuously, select the Forever check box.
To play the sound a fixed number of times, clear the Forever check box, and then select or type the number of times you want the sound to play in the Loop box.
To save and preview the page, on the File menu, click Save.

Make sure that your speakers are working, and then click Preview in Browser on the File menu.

View a demo on adding sound to a web page

Notes:

The larger the size of the file, the longer it takes to load the page.
This feature is not supported by all Web browsers.

You can add many types of audio files to your Web page, including the following:

Wave files (*.wav)
Midi sequencer files (*.mid)
RealAudio files (*.ram; *.ra)
AIFF sound files (*.aif; *.aifc; *.aiff)
AU sound files (*.au; *.snd)
Moving Picture Experts Group (*.mpeg), MPEG Audio-Layer 3 files (*.mp3)
Microsoft Active Streaming files (.*asf)

Adding video to your web page

In Page view, at the bottom of the document window, click Design .
Position the insertion point where you want to insert a video.
On the Insert menu, point to Picture, and then click Video.
Locate and click the video file, and then click Open.

Notes:

To view the video, in Page view, at the bottom of the document window, click Preview Button image

Some Web browsers do not support video
You can choose to embed your video so that it automatically downloads with the page is opened or you can link to a video file and let the user decide whether or not they want to download it.
You can also choose to play the video once, loop the video to play continuously or only play the video when the user moves the cursor over the link
Keep in mind that bandwidth is still an issue for many students. It's good practice to indicate the size of the video file so that users can decide whether or not to play it.

Some of the most popular video file formats that you can embed or link to are:

Windows Video files (*.avi)
Audio and video files for use with Microsoft Windows Media Player.
Windows Media files (*.asf)
Streaming (streaming: Playing sounds or video in real time as they are downloaded over the Internet as opposed to storing them on a computer first.) file format for use with Windows Media Player. This file format can also include audio, scripts, ActiveX controls, and HTML documents.
RealAudio files (*.ram; *.ra)
Streaming file format for use with RealNetworks RealAudio Player. Provides optimization for low- to medium-speed connections.
Moving Picture Experts Group (*.mpeg)
This family of standards is used for coding audio-visual information — movies, video, music in a digitally compressed format. MPEG files are generally much smaller than most video formats, but provide the same quality.
Apple QuickTime (*.mov; *.qt)
QuickTime is technology that is built into the Apple Macintosh operating system and is used by most Macintosh applications that include video or animation. Microsoft Windows-based computers can also play files in QuickTime format, but they require a special QuickTime plug-in.