HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
5.4. Background Audio
One other form of inline multimedia is generally available to web surfer-
saudio. Most browsers treat audio multimedia as separate documents,
downloaded and displayed by special helper applications, applets, or
plug-ins. Internet Explorer and Opera, on the other hand, contain built-in
sound decoders and support a special tag (
<bgsound>
) that lets you integ-
rate with your document an audio file that plays in the background as a
soundtrack for your page. [
Applets and Objects, 12.1
]
[
Embedded Con-
We applaud the developers of Internet Explorer and Opera for providing
a mechanism that more cleanly integrates audio into HTML and XHTML
documents. The possibilities with audio are very enticing, but at the same
time, we caution authors that special tags and attributes for audio don't
work with other browsers, and whether this is the method that the ma-
jority of browsers will eventually support is not at all assured.
5.4.1. The <bgsound> Tag
Use the
<bgsound>
tag to play a soundtrack in the background. This tag is
for Internet Explorer and Opera documents only. Other browsers ignore
the tag. It downloads and plays an audio file when the user first down-
loads and displays the host document. The background sound file also
will replay whenever the user refreshes the browser display.
