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Multimedia
For many Web surfers, text-only pages are dull and boring. Many people feel that the whole idea behind a personal page on the World Wide Web is to tell something about yourself, inform your family & friends about what is going on in your life, share your interests and meet new people. What better way to do so than with pictures? As they say, A picture is worth a thousand words. To get started with using images & icons, you need to digitize them. If you already have a digitized version of an image, great. If not, you need to scan it with a scanner. If you don't have a scanner and don't have a friend who has one, then run down to a photocopying store and they can do it for you. High-quality electronic images tend to be stored as TIFF files, which don't work on the Web. If your graphic is in TIFF format, then you need to convert the image into either JPEG or GIF format--the two formats supported by today's browsers. (JPEG works best for photographs; GIF for drawings and line art.) You can find links to a variety of shareware image converters in CNET's build a great Web site: cheap! feature. DO NOT USE BITMAP IMAGES (.bmp)! They are very large in file size and take forever to download. Once you have your electronic image in the right format, you're ready to put it in your Web page using the <IMG> tag. The <IMG> tag is similar to the anchor tag in that it points to a resource that's not actually on the page--in this case, it uses the SRC (source) attribute to point to the digital image, like this: <IMG SRC="logo.gif">. When you place the image file in the same directory as your pages, this tag will find it and display it in the browser. To add an image to your page, simply put the following code in your HTML at the point you want the image to appear: <IMG SRC="image.gif"> Before you start loading your pages with pictures, keep a couple of things in mind. Images, even small ones, take a long time to download compared with text. Always keep the image as small as possible in both physical size and file size while still allowing it to get its message across. You can also speed up downloads by using the <IMG> tag's WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes. If, as in our example, an image is 100 pixels wide by 50 pixels high, you'd use the following tag: <IMG SRC="image.gif" WIDTH=100 HEIGHT=50> When a browser sees the width and height values, it automatically displays the image according to those values. Finally, you'll want to place your images using the ALIGN attribute of the <IMG> tag; the options are LEFT, RIGHT, or CENTER. For our example, let's place the logo on the right side of the first paragraph: <IMG SRC="logo.gif" ALIGN=RIGHT WIDTH=100 HEIGHT=50> Once you have the HTML code, upload the page and the image file to your Web site. A word on copyright infringement: In the early days of the Internet, content was free to all, available to be shared. Although there are parts of the Net that are still that way, other sites now include copyrighted material. Copyrighted material is the property of the owner and the owner can take you to court if you make a digital copy (say, on your personal home page) without permission. Often you may see the © indicating a copyrighted work, but the material does not have to be marked to be entitled to copyright protection. Third parties can similarly own and legally restrict your copying of trademarks, photographs, and other intellectual property. So, please, for your own sake, stick to images that you know you can use without infringing someone else's rights to that content. When in doubt, seek the permission of the owner. (The images in our clipart library are free for you to use.) The AT&T Worldnet Service Icon Library The AT&T Worldnet Service Button Library The AT&T Worldnet Service Navigation Library The AT&T Worldnet Service Miscellaneous Graphic Library The standard gray background can get a bit dull. Thankfully, changing a page's background color is as simple as adding a BGCOLOR attribute and value to the <BODY> tag. To get total color control, you'll need to use hexadecimal codes that represent colors. That's not as hard as it might sound: there are a lot of people who have already worked out all the color combinations and posted their hexadecimal equivalents on the Web. Most browsers can display colors from a palette of only 256 different hues and shades. If you use a color that's not in the palette, the browser will try to choose a similar one. If you want to guarantee that your colors will appear as close to your original choices as possible, select shades from Netscape's 216 browser-safe colors. As an example, let's use a plain white background. The hexadecimal code for white is #FFFFFF, so we'll expand the existing <BODY> tag to read: <BODYBGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> If plain hues aren't exciting enough for you, you can use an image as your background. Any image you choose can be tiled into the background--that is, it will go into the background at whatever size it is and then reproduce itself over and over to fill the page. To tile an image, use the <BODY> tag in this way (where bgimage.gif is a sample background image): <BODY BACKGROUND="bgimage.gif"> Once you have the HTML coded, upload the page and the image file to your Web site. A word on copyright infringement: In the early days of the Internet, content was free to all, available to be shared. Although there are parts of the Net that are still that way, other sites now include copyrighted material. Copyrighted material is the property of the owner and the owner can take you to court if you make a digital copy (say, on your personal home page) without permission. Often you may see the © indicating a copyrighted work, but the material does not have to be marked to be entitled to copyright protection. Third parties can similarly own and legally restrict your copying of trademarks, photographs, and other intellectual property. So, please, for your own sake, stick to images that you know you can use without infringing someone else's rights to that content. When in doubt, seek the permission of the owner. (The images, icons, and backgrounds we provide are free for you to use.) The AT&T Worldnet Service Background Library There are many software packages out there to record and edit sound files. Both Windows and Macintosh computers come with basic sound recorders. While limited in features, they will let you create basic sound files you can then add to a page. If you'd rather use something more powerful, check out the variety of shareware options for both platforms, including GoldWave 16-bit, GoldWave 32-bit, and SoundGadget Pro 32-bit for the PC; and SoundHack and SoundApp for the Mac. If you want the best professional software, then take a peek at packages such as Macromedia's SoundEdit for the Mac, and Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge for the PC. Regardless of what package you use, some basics always apply.
Besides recording your own sounds files, there are a multitude of files on the Internet called MIDI files. These files are digitized instrumental music files that have been optimized for use on the Web. Some are copyrighted and you will need the author's permission to use them. Many are free. If you just want a little background music to play while someone reads your Web page, use MIDI files. Getting started creating MIDI clips is pretty easy: you need some minimal knowledge of musical notation and structure, a PC with a sound card, or a Macintosh and some MIDI sequencing software such as FreeStyle for Windows. These software packages turn your computer's keyboard into a musical keyboard for recording and editing MIDI files. If you want to be professional, you can even hook up a real MIDI keyboard and sound module to your computer. You can also find some links to various midi oriented Web pages in the Sources for Sounds & Music section. Once you have a sound file, what do you do with it? Well, HTML has everything you need to add a file to your site. This bit of HTML code:
would make a link to play your sound file example. Simple, isn't it? You can even cause a sound file to start the second someone hits your page. Microsoft Internet Explorer versions 2+ and Netscape Navigator 2+ handle background sounds differently, but you can add a couple of HTML tags that will handle both browsers. For example, the following HTML code will play a background MIDI file whether someone is using Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator. <embed src="midi.mid" autostart=true hidden=true> Newer versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer also support the <EMBED> tag via built in capabilities, and if you have have a midi plugin installed, the program will be really confused. This can be fixed by putting the <BGSOUND> inside a <NOEMBED> </NOEMBED> pair <bgsound> tells Internet Explorer to start playing the sound file. <embed> with the "autostart=true" and "hidden=true" commands tells Navigator to start playing the file immediately. You can find out more about HTML's <embed> tag at the Netscape site. Keep your background sound files small so they'll download quickly. If you're considering a longer piece of background music, consider using a MIDI file. And do your site's visitors a favor by adding the <bgsound> and <embed> tags for sound files near the end of the code for your page. That way visitors will be able to look at your site while the sound file is loading in the background. Also, keep in mind that making people listen to sounds whenever they hit your page is considered poor etiquette by many Web users. Not only that, but Web servers can be set up to handle included sound files differently, and that could result in some visitors receiving an error message when they hit your site. Bottom line, use a link, and let the visitors decide whether they want to make some noise Crescendo's This is just the beginning when it comes to music on the web. Check out Crescendo's home page for information on doing lots of neat things with music on your web pages using the most popular Music Player for the Web. A word on copyright infringement: In the early days of the Internet, content was free to all, available to be shared. Although there are parts of the Net that are still that way, other sites now include copyrighted material. Copyrighted material is the property of the owner and the owner can take you to court if you make a digital copy (say, on your personal home page) without permission. Often you may see the © indicating a copyrighted work, but the material does not have to be marked to be entitled to copyright protection. Third parties can similarly own and legally restrict your copying of trademarks, photographs, and other intellectual property. So, please, for your own sake, stick to images that you know you can use without infringing someone else's rights to that content. When in doubt, seek the permission of the owner. |