In this hour, you learn how to embed video and sound into a Web page using the non-standard <EMBED> tag. (Its officially sanctioned successor, the <OBJECT> tag, does not yet function reliably in any available Web browser.) These tags can be used to include a vast array of media types, including besides just AVI and MIDI files. Some of these media types are alternative audio and video formats that aim to achieve greater compression, quality, or compatibility than the Windows standard formats. Others, such as Shockwave and QuickTime VR, add a variety of interactive features that old-fashioned audiovisual media types lack.
(View HTML tags covered in Hour 16.)
Music(Figures 16.1 - 16.2)
Even though the <EMBED> is not part of the HTML standard, it is currently the easiest reliable way to embed media files for both Netscape and Microsoft browsers.
Fractal Video Clip(Figures 16.3 - 16.5)
You can embed a video into a Web page with the same tag used to embed sound. The <EMBED> tag in this example also includes the AUTOSTART and LOOP attributes, which tell Netscape and Microsoft's media players to start playing the video when the page loads, and to repeat it over and over again as long as the page is being displayed.
Use the <EMBED> tag only for short sounds that don't repeat. For videos and background music, you'll avoid annoying a lot of people by offering a good old fashioned <A HREF> link to the media file instead of embedding it.
"In this hour's sample pages, I use Windows AVI video and MIDI sound files. For better compatibility with non-Windows computers, you could use Apple's QuickTime audio/video, the Real Audio/Real Video, format or any other video format supported by today's Web browsers. The procedures shown in this hour for incorporating the files into your Web pages are the same, no matter which file format you choose."
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