Adding Audio to your Website
Should you add audio to your website? Before we even start, let's answer one simple question. Do we even need audio on our site? Let me answer this for you…unless your site is in Flash AND has a high level of interactivity, absolutely not!
Why don't I want audio on my site? This is simple really… bandwidth. It's not that you don't have bandwidth, but chances are quite a few of your customers don't (like all those AOL users), even if it's 'streaming audio'. And with all that other insane stuff your slow customers are downloading (ie - java, images, possibly some flash elements, etc.), you don't want to be adding more to their list, especially a 1+mb song. I'm sure the song sounds great, and if your kid wrote/sang/performed it, I'm sure it's wonderful and the world should hear it… but not on your website.
Anyway, you've heard my warning. Here's how you do it anyway because you don't care that I just told you not to do it.
Option #1: Stream your audio via Flash.
This tactic is semi-complicated and will not only require knowledge of both Flash and HTML, but also some basic knowledge of Action script as well. You'll probably be able to find a good tutorial or example on how to do this at Flashkit.com. The advantage to this is that the user never actually downloads the file and streaming the file doesn't take nearly as much bandwidth.
Option #2: Embed your audio into Flash
Why this tactic over others? You can compress the audio more and make your load times faster. This requires no action scripting knowledge and is very simple. There's an easy tutorial in your Flash help on how to do this.
Option #3: Stream the audio with Windows Media
This is a nifty feature, but requires Windows Media Services to be installed on your server. So if you're on Linux, you're out of luck unless you use another method such as Quicktime or Real Media, which are both starting to die. If you can actually pull this off, your server administrator will able to give you code to insert into your site to stream the audio.
Option #4: Attach the audio
This is the not so smart way because the user must download the file before it plays, but it works nonetheless. You'll be able to do this easily via you HTML editor such as Dreamweaver, GoLive or FrontPage. Do some research on the net and you'll even find you can attach audio to a site via CSS. The #1 big problem with this is bandwidth as I've been preaching. But also how the audio is played depends on the user's computer setup. If the user is setup to play all files in Windows Media Player, the player will pop open, which is very annoying.
Some things you might want to remember assuming you have gotten this far in the article (audio is bad, remember?). Never use a WAV file or an unknown file format. They're either too big to download or won't work on everyone's computer. Stick to formats like MP3 or WMA, which are highly compressed, still sound good and work on virtually everybody's computer. Yes, by adding audio you will run into cross-browser compliancy issues, meaning your audio will not play on every browser.
Of course, if you have a high end Flash site with animation, interaction, etc… maybe a Flash intro even, I'd highly recommend adding some audio to jazz things up. Audio simply isn't a logical solution or addition for basic e-commerce websites.
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Ecommerce
Financial
B2B
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Source:http://www.monstersmallbusiness.com
Should you add audio to your website? Before we even start, let's answer one simple question. Do we even need audio on our site? Let me answer this for you…unless your site is in Flash AND has a high level of interactivity, absolutely not!
Why don't I want audio on my site? This is simple really… bandwidth. It's not that you don't have bandwidth, but chances are quite a few of your customers don't (like all those AOL users), even if it's 'streaming audio'. And with all that other insane stuff your slow customers are downloading (ie - java, images, possibly some flash elements, etc.), you don't want to be adding more to their list, especially a 1+mb song. I'm sure the song sounds great, and if your kid wrote/sang/performed it, I'm sure it's wonderful and the world should hear it… but not on your website.
Anyway, you've heard my warning. Here's how you do it anyway because you don't care that I just told you not to do it.
Option #1: Stream your audio via Flash.
This tactic is semi-complicated and will not only require knowledge of both Flash and HTML, but also some basic knowledge of Action script as well. You'll probably be able to find a good tutorial or example on how to do this at Flashkit.com. The advantage to this is that the user never actually downloads the file and streaming the file doesn't take nearly as much bandwidth.
Option #2: Embed your audio into Flash
Why this tactic over others? You can compress the audio more and make your load times faster. This requires no action scripting knowledge and is very simple. There's an easy tutorial in your Flash help on how to do this.
Option #3: Stream the audio with Windows Media
This is a nifty feature, but requires Windows Media Services to be installed on your server. So if you're on Linux, you're out of luck unless you use another method such as Quicktime or Real Media, which are both starting to die. If you can actually pull this off, your server administrator will able to give you code to insert into your site to stream the audio.
Option #4: Attach the audio
This is the not so smart way because the user must download the file before it plays, but it works nonetheless. You'll be able to do this easily via you HTML editor such as Dreamweaver, GoLive or FrontPage. Do some research on the net and you'll even find you can attach audio to a site via CSS. The #1 big problem with this is bandwidth as I've been preaching. But also how the audio is played depends on the user's computer setup. If the user is setup to play all files in Windows Media Player, the player will pop open, which is very annoying.
Some things you might want to remember assuming you have gotten this far in the article (audio is bad, remember?). Never use a WAV file or an unknown file format. They're either too big to download or won't work on everyone's computer. Stick to formats like MP3 or WMA, which are highly compressed, still sound good and work on virtually everybody's computer. Yes, by adding audio you will run into cross-browser compliancy issues, meaning your audio will not play on every browser.
Of course, if you have a high end Flash site with animation, interaction, etc… maybe a Flash intro even, I'd highly recommend adding some audio to jazz things up. Audio simply isn't a logical solution or addition for basic e-commerce websites.
Sitemap
Ecommerce
Financial
B2B
Free Evaluation
Source:http://www.monstersmallbusiness.com
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