Multimedia Controls
Dreamweaver offers behaviors for controlling sounds and multimedia assets (Shockwave and Flash).
Playing Sound
You can use the Play Sound behavior to add
sound
to your web site. To play a simple beep, you could attach the
behavior to a
button and trigger it using the
onMouseDown event. To play background
music, you could attach the behavior to
the <body> tag and trigger it using the
onLoad event.
Applying the Play Sound behavior opens the Play Sound dialog box (not shown), with which you can specify the sound file to play. Web delivery typically requires compressed formats such as.mid (MIDI), .mp3 (MPEG-3), .mod (Amiga MOD format used by WinAmp), or .ra (RealAudio). Other formats include .wav (WAVE), .au (Sun’s sound format), and .aif (AIFF).
Another common format is .swa (Shockwave audio), which is similar to .mp3 and typically played back using either the Flash or Shockwave plugin instead of the Play Sound behavior. In fact, all audio playback requires a browser plugin and can be notoriously inconsistent across platforms and browsers. Generally, Flash is your best bet for simple audio playback, although Shockwave offers more advanced control at the expense of a larger, less-popular plugin. If you use the Play Sound behavior, set the server MIME type for the sound file’s type, and test your web page thoroughly in all target browsers on all platforms.
The Play Sound behavior adds code in several places. Like all behaviors, it adds a function call to the ...
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