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Home Page Building

Sound: Now let's get wired for sound.

Sounds are like ice cream. They come in different flavors (formats). There are MIDIs, AUs, RAMs (be sure to read the caution about RAMs toward the bottom of the page) and WAV's to name some. Due to the large file size of most of these type sounds midi files are the most practical to use. Although they are called and referred to as MIDI's when linking to an address or transloading they always must end in .mid (dot mid).

The code(s) for adding sound to your sig box or page is:

On a web page or in a Webtv sig box you can put your sound code(s) anywhere between the <<>body> and <<>/body> tags. Some puters wont render both codes so some people use both to enable more browsers to be able to hear them. If you'll put your sound code(s) at the bottom of the page directly above the <<>/body> tag it will make the page load faster. That allows all the text and graphics to completely load before it starts loading the sound making the reader to be able to see the page quicker.

That's the simple code and it works to play your tune one time then quit. We'll start with the bgsound src code first. To have it play more than one time make your code like this:

<<>bgsound src="URLof-sound" loop="infinite">
You may use "infinite" or "infinate", either one will work.

loop="infinite" makes it play as long as you are on that page. To have it play twice and quit, loop="2" the number can be changed to as many times as you want it to play before it quits. If you don't put a loop= command it will play once and quit.

Ok, here is the address of a midi that is permissible to link to. Copy the code above (either version) and paste it in the test bed then come back and copy this midi addy and delete URLof-sound between the quotation marks and paste this addy then click on "test" to be transported to the test review page and see if you can hear it.

Now if you want to get a little fancy with your sound here's a few other options you can do. To make it clickable text to start the music use the first basic example code without the loop command. This is done with the first basic anchor <<>a href="URL"><<>/a> code tag you learned on the Sig or Page In A Box page.

That gives you:

Hey!! Play Me!!

~~~~~~~~~~
Stop Audio
~~~~~~~~~~

The other method is the embed source commmand. This will give you a little speaker you can click on to start the music. NOTE: This speaker can only be seen on Webtv's. Some computers can't see them and would not be able to click on it to start the music on a web page. That's why you should always use an alt="speaker" attribute added to an image code. Coincidently anytime you e-mail a computer you should take your sig out but it is fine for using in your sig box as long as you are e-mailing Webtvers and posting in Webtv only newsgroups that don't object to sigs. Another thing just as in the anchor clickable text method it only plays once and can't be repeated without clicking on the speaker again. You don't have to put the alt="speaker but I will put it in once to show you how it is supposed to look. If you don't want to use it just omit the alt="speaker" from the code and it will work fine for you. The code is:

And that gives you this:

If you wanted it to start playing by it's self and showing no speaker, you could use the Netscape autostart command of autostart="true" that will make it play once and quit. If you wanted it to continue playing you would add in addition to autostart="true", loop="true". To make the code correct you should also add hidden="true" but for webtv it's not necessary. I will show it once in the example below.

~~~~~~~~~~
Stop Audio
~~~~~~~~~~

Now if you wanted to put text beside the speaker after the embed source tag you would just make a space and type as usual.If you wanted more than a space between the speaker and the text (say five) you would hold down the "Alt" key and hit the space bar five times. I'll use five spaces in the example below.

Which should give you this.

     Click speaker to hear "Brown Eyed Girl." midi

Ok, lets see if the Bridge Troll can get mental now. I'll bet the question most on your mind right now is, "How did he make that Stop Audio?" Well actually there used to be a webtv trick command that used to work but since a recent upgrade it doesn't any more. However while the bowser is playing a tune with a loop="infinate" command an interuption of another sound that stops will cancel the first command to loop infinate. These are usually done with a short WAV. All you do is make an anchor command and put the URL of the wav. Here's one you are welcome to download to your files.

http://www.oocities.org/Heartland/Park/3904/aud/carhorn.wav

Now that you have successfully made the song play go back and do it again and this time put the "Stop Audio" with it in case some one doesn't like your choice of music (can you believe that?).

<<>a href="http://www.oocities.org/Heartland/Park/3904/aud/carhorn.wa v">Stop the Music!<<>/a> Gives you this:

Stop the Music!

RAMs NOTE:

FYI RAMs effect a lot of webtv units and when a post or e-mail is opened, or a web page with one in it, it will freeze up a unit to the point where they can't even power off. Then the unit will make loud oscillating noises and you have to pull the plug from the wall. After that you can't just log back on it has to sit for a while until it quits making clicking and popping noises. People will learn who you are and that you use them and won't open and read your posts or e-mail if you use them. If you must it would be consierate of you to make them clickable and label it as a RAM. Some people are putting where the name goes on their e-mail "RAM INSIDE." Thank you for your time and attention.

If you clicked on RAMs above on this page to read the above NOTE: click here to return.

Best tip is put your text settings on "small" from your Webtv Home Page (Using Webtv) to work on your web page. That may save you a lot of problems with "ghost spaces" in the future.

For GeoCities pages instead of using header tags <<>h1> in the head I use <<>font size="6"> tags in the body to get the headers below the Geoguide Banner, like this:

<<>HTML>
<<>HEAD>
<<>TITLE>Name your page<<>/TITLE>
<<>/HEAD>
<<>BODY BGCOLOR="BLACK" TEXT="WHITE" etc.>
<<>CENTER><<>!--geoguide--><<>/CENTER><<>BR>
<<>P>
<<>CENTER><<>FONT SIZE="7">My Awsome Page<<>/FONT><<>/CENTER><<>BR>
<<>P>
<<>CENTER><<>FONT SIZE="6">All About Me<<>/FONT><<>/CENTER><<>BR>
Rest of page from here down.

Stay tuned for more tips soon, thanks.

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