Forum Moderators: phranque
catb.org/~esr/html-hell.html
and you will quickly become THE GREATEST WEBMASTER EVER!
we tried to convince him about the download time without bringing up other issues i.e the song is really annoying etc. but he insists.
maybe i should send him over to this discussion thread :)
bc great stuff "m**turbation with Javascript" that's a new term for me, living and learning
maybe its the next big thing and we dont realise!
h*tp://www.hamsterdance.com/
they even have a few more tunes on it now
jesus wept!
Don't worry about those people who hate background music. They are the same people who leave if your text doesn't resize and your layout isn't fluid enough. And they'll never be happy with what you're selling anyway. They're customers you don't need.
Anyone want to do a study on how much adding bg music to their site increased sales? No?
Don't worry about those people who hate background music.
yeah - they're only customers - who needs 'em? ;)
Background midi can remove customers.
Absence of suffering puts the webmaster on the path to true enlightenment.
Master <EMBED>
Talk about embarrassing. Bet that web site never gets visited again.
Anyone remember those Yahoo! banner ads with embedded music that were run awhile back? Now that was a bad, bad idea..
- Chad
What about voice?
I think if you're considering anything that the user might not expect -- whether it be music, voice, charges to their credit card, rainbow-colored divider graphics, pop-up windows, etc. -- you have to warn them first so they can decide if they want it or not. Forcing unexpected things on users isn't what I'd call user-friendly.
Observed much more often in Flash pages as opposed to plain Jane, garden variety HTML.
You may go blind trying to find the teensy weensy off button, but at least you won't go deaf :)
I hate it. I just hate it. Oh, how much i hate it. If i hear a midi sound at a web page i close it immediately. Seriously. No second visit.
I agree with a passion. It's an intrusion on my personal space, close behind those sites that open the browser to full screen and disable all local controls and try to force me to watch a five minute Flash presentation.
[edited by: Marcia at 3:11 am (utc) on Oct. 29, 2003]
[edit reason] See stickymail. ;) [/edit]
As I read the article a booming sound came out of my sub-woofer and all hell broke loose as footballers suddenly appeared over the article and thunderous music accompanied it. Apart from scaring the S**t out of me at 2.30am it also made me hit the back button faster than a "hail mary" throw from a mississippi born quarter-back.
Websites like these are cool the way a leopard print skirt is cool. They are the platform heels of the internet, the David Soul/Hutch [freespace.virgin.net] to your Paul Michael Glaser/Starsky [sonypictures.com].
Midi is like Mac and Cheese. Background music is cool beyond words, especially in the hands of those who don't know better.
However, a faint background sound of the sea when viewing a presentation or flash movie sunk in an HTML content page could do you some favours.
I'd never use midi though, too difficult to guess which midi instruments are going to be played at the user end. What's more if you use a safe Midi set, these instruments sound a bit like the old monophonic keyboards you could buy for $30 back in the 80s.
When you want to put commercial (ie mass market) tracks on your site you'll usually find the costs prohibitive as licensing the usage is, apart from anything else, something that the agencies running this field have not grasped yet as an affordable commercial licensing model.
So your third alternative is to.. either use library music, which can be okay but can still be costly, or find someone that writes good music and is currently unlicensed, thus the agreement on costs is a negotiation.
I've added music I've written to websites only when I've felt it would enhance the proposition. The skill is ensuring that the actual bitrate quality is going to enhance the website as a whole (which requires a deeper knowledge of encoding). The danger is that you will serve bad quality sound and make the user think, "this sounds terrible" and actually dilute the perception the user has about the quality of the product or service being viewed. It's a fine balance. Currently I've found flash is a good medium for delivery, So naturally a prerequisite for having this installed by the user for viewing the site determines whether I advise it's use. If its the case that flash is not a requisite for the site then I won't use the music.
We are all used to seeing loads of sites work and not work. I've noted though that whenever I show a site to someone that has music on it (not an internet savvy), they say "oh that's cool". You can even use some kind of cookie so that on the users second visit a nice little message appears saying "you listened to music on your last visit, would you like to switch it off now and in the future". That's a problem with webmusicked [sic] sites I've seen, trying to turn off the music is hard to do...designers don't make it clear.
I don't agree with a generic "oh music is terrible on websites" it just doesn't sound thought out properly. And if it's tacky music...what's it doing on the website? Unless you are selling tack.
Glyn.
Or you could try to be cute and list it as your website's theme song if it's a more personalized site. But for commercial sites its like the 3rd rail, with folks reaching for that back button...
