Background Sound

Sometimes you will visit a web site and suddenly your speakers will start spitting out sounds.  I don't know about you, but the first thing that I do when this happens is curse silently. Then I take a quick glance (a second or two) and decide if I really need to be visiting this web site. One of two things will happen at this point. I will find a button to turn off the sound and stay or I will surf to another site.

Every new webmaster seems to do it at least once. Add background sound to their web site. And, you know, there are times when it is appropriate. A musicians site, for example, might be the right place. Or a site all about MIDI files might also have a background sound. I ran across a MIDI site once that played a random, different MIDI each time a page was loaded. That was cool, but only because that was what the site was about.

Here is what one webmaster said in a newsgroup post:

Personally, I hate tunes that autoload on a page (especially if there's no control to turn them off). Makes me hit the back button immediately and never revisit.

Okay, so you do want sound? Here's how you do it:

<bgsound src="../Sounds/Memofu.mid" loop="-1">

This HTML tag belongs in the header for your page, between the <HEAD> and </HEAD>.

An alternative, which gives the visitor a way to turn the music off, is Crescendo.

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