HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
Royal Wedding
is one of a handful of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer productions from the
early 1950s whose original copyrights were never renewed. This means that versions
of the movie are now in the public domain and that Maxine can add production stills,
sound clips, and video clips from the film to her Web page without worrying about the
copyright. One of her audio clips contains the first few seconds from the film's overture.
She would like to add that clip to the Listen Up box in the upper-right corner of the Web
page. She also has a brief excerpt from a Fred Astaire dance number that she wants to
add to the In Focus box in the lower-right corner of the page.
Multimedia Sites and Bandwidth
One of the most important factors in the application of multimedia on the Web is
bandwidth.
bandwidth
is a measure of the amount of data that can be sent through a
communication pipeline each second. In the early days of the Web, efforts to include
multimedia elements on Web sites were hampered by low-bandwidth connections, as
most users connected to the Internet over slow landlines. Under those conditions, a Web
site containing more than one or two short multimedia clips would be inaccessible to
most users.
This situation changed because of two developments. One was high-speed Internet
access being made more available to the general public through the use of cable
modems and DSL. The second development was the reduction of the file size of multi-
media clips, without sacrificing sound or video quality, through the use of file compres-
sion technology. Paired together, the two developments made multimedia much more
accessible to most Internet users, eventually resulting in the creation of one of the most
popular sites on the Web, YouTube, which is solely dedicated to the creation and dis-
semination of user-created video.
Understanding Plug-Ins
Multimedia is displayed within a Web page in a fashion similar to an inline image. The
controls to play a media clip are also displayed as part of the Web page. To play a multi-
media file, a browser often will have access to a plug-in or add-on—an extra component
accessed by the browser to provide a feature or capability not included with the browser.
The most commonly used plug-ins for multimedia files include Windows Media Player,
the QuickTime plug-in for video and audio clips, and Adobe Flash Player for video,
audio, and animation.
However, starting with the widespread adoption of HTML5, many browsers now
include built-in support for audio and video files, removing the need for plug-ins. You'll
work with the HTML5 multimedia elements as well as some plug-ins to add the multi-
media content to the
Royal Wedding
page, starting with adding an audio clip. Before you
add that audio clip, you'll first learn about the various audio formats available for the
Web and explore the differences in their sound quality and file size.
