Zap's MUSIC-ON-THE-NET Tutorial: Adding MIDI background music

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Zap's MUSIC-ON-THE-NET Tutorial!

Adding MIDI background music

Note: These pages, while still "true", are fairly outdated by todays standard. They still contain correct information but it's somewhat dated.

Intro

This page tells you how to set up MIDI files to play in the background of your WWW page.

First steps

Note:

You must make sure that your Web-server has the correct MIDI "mime types" defined. Information on "mime types", what they are e.t.c. is available here. But if your MIDI stuff seems to work fine when you run it at home, but doesn't work after you upload it to your Web server (the files appear as garbage on-screen, instead of being played), then the "mime types" are not configured right, and you must contact your webmaster

In the Foreground

To make a MIDI file play "on request" in the foreground, is just a matter of linking, as usual:

   <a href="melody.mid">Click to hear my MIDI tune!</a>

If this works when you are at home, but not from your server, the "mime types" of the server is not configured correctly (see above). Notify your server administrator (webmaster). More info on this page.

In the Background - the EMBED and BGSOUND tags

The simplest way, is to use the <EMBED> tag, which Netscape supports, and the <BGSOUND> tag which Internet Explorer supports.

The problem is, that newer Internet Explorers also support the <EMBED> tag, and if they have the plugin, will be really confused if they are both there. This can be fixed by putting the <BGSOUND> inside a <NOEMBED> </NOEMBED> pair, as seen below.

A discussion on this is avilable att the Crescendo site at http://www.liveupdate.com/mimetypes.html.

FLAME

But PLEASE avoid the Crescendo method described in http://www.liveupdate.com/embed.html like the PLAGUE, it's just a stupid way for LiveUpdate to grab a disappearing market, since a perfectly good MIDI player - with autostart and everything - is available in Netscape!

That Crescendo/LiveUpdate attempts to get around what they affectionately call "the MIME type problem" with stupid detours, and their own, by them invented and not registred, mime-type "music/crescendo" just makes things worse than they already are!

That a server requires a MIME-type for a new filetype is nothing new, and nothing strange. It's true for all file types, not just MIDI!.

If MicroSwat's InterNut Explorer is broken and doesn't require a MIME type, then don't blame that on Netscape, or try to hack away the problem with stupid stuff like the Crescende guys are doing!!

This is what you write to support both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer:

   <embed src="melody.mid" width=200 height=55 autostart=true loop=true>
   <noembed>
   <bgsound src="melody.mid" loop=infinite>
   </noembed>

If your mime-types in your server are set up right, this should work. A few things to note, though:

The width=200 height=55 suits the Crescendo player. The LiveAudio (comes with Netscape) player is by default narrower, 150 pixels.
There is a "magic" setting: width=2 height=0, that makes the player invisible. Note that width=0 height=0 does not work and will crash Netscape!

Reference sites

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Page accessed 2815 times since November 2019 and was last modified September 2006