Microsoft FrontPage web hosting can make your website look great but it can also make it sound great too. A lot of people add music or sound to their site to grab people’s attention or set the mood for their web site. For example, if you have a travel sight, you could play Caribbean music to get people thinking about going south in the winter time. If you have a gaming sight, you could put sound effects on your site like the ones in the games you sell. It’s up to you, but sound definitely adds another dimension to your site if it’s appropriate to have; if someone doesn’t like it, they can always mute their computer or turn the sound off.
To understand sound on a website better, let’s look at how it gets played first. Sound on a website either has to be played through the web browser or operating system, multimedia software like Windows Media Player or RealPlayer, or with plug-ins. There are two types of sound files that you can add to your web site. The first one is simply referred to as a standard sound file. This is a file that can be played on your site or, if you give permission can be downloaded to someone’s computer and played later. You would use this kind of file if you were selling compact discs with music or instruction on them and wanted someone to be able to have a sample that they could listen to later in order to make a decision to purchase your product. The second kind of sound file is a streaming audio file that simply plays music or sound when someone visits your site for more effect.
The main difference between a standard sound file and streaming audio is how they are downloaded. A standard audio file has to be completely down loaded before it can play, so if someone has a slow connection or you have a large file, the user will have to wait around until the whole thing is downloaded from the browser in order to hear it. This is why it is better to use a standard sound file in the situation where you want someone to listen to it later as a sample, as opposed to when they are viewing your sight. If you want someone to hear music when they are on your site, use streaming audio. Streaming audio was invented for immediate delivery on slow Internet connections. The way streaming audio works is that it delivers the sound file in chunks, so that even if someone has a slow connection, your sound file will still be delivered in a steady stream. This is because the whole file doesn’t have to be downloaded all at once to start hearing it. Microsoft FrontPage web hosting will work with either type of file, but it’s much better to us streaming audio if you want to create a certain mood while people are on your site.
Three of the most popular file formats that you can use with Microsoft FrontPage web hosting are MIDI and WAV files, RealAudio files, and MP3 Files. They are all supported by FrontPage, so what sound formats you use is really a matter of preference or what kind of technology you have access to. Each kind of file format has its advantages; the main difference is that RealAudio is generally used when you want to create a sound file for streaming audio. If you sign up with a low cost web hosting company, make sure that your hosting plan supports some kind of audio files. This will be helpful if you decide not to use Microsoft FrontPage web hosting for your site.
Adding sound to your site with FrontPage, like everything else, is extremely easy. In Design View, right click on the page where you want to add a sound file. Click the General tab on the Page Properties box when it opens. Locate the sound file that you want with the browse button. Pick the number of times you want the music to loop and click ‘Okay.’ That’s all there is to it. If you want to make a sound file available for download, all you have to do is copy the file and then paste it into your FrontPage web file. After that, open the page where you want to add the link to the sound file. Type an identifying title for the link to the file and select the title. Click the hyperlink toolbar button, choose to link to the sound file and click OK. Now you have a sound file that a visitor to your site can download for later use.
As you can see, putting sound on your website with Microsoft FrontPage web hosting is fairly simple. Removing it and changing it are just as easy. You can even leave audio files in your web page files and connect them or disconnect them as you choose.
