Hour 19. Embedding Multimedia in Web Pages

Multimedia is a popular buzzword for sound, motion video, and interactive animation. This hour shows you how to include multimedia in your web pages.

The first thing you should be aware of is that Internet multimedia is still an evolving technology. Computer multimedia in general is actually relatively new, but Internet multimedia is even newer, and is therefore in a more noticeable state of change. The rapid pace of growth for Internet multimedia creates three obstacles for anyone who wants to include audiovisual material in a web page:

There are many incompatible multimedia file formats from which to choose, and none has yet emerged as a singular industry standard.
Some people do not have Internet connections fast enough to receive high-quality audiovisual data without a long wait.
HTML tags for including multimedia in web pages have been notoriously inconsistent; XHTML offers a standard approach that is helping to set everything straight.

The moral of the story: Whatever you do today to implement a multimedia web site, be prepared for inevitable changes as multimedia file formats and technologies continue to evolve.

The good news is that you can sidestep these obstacles to some extent today, and they are all likely to become even easier to overcome in the near future. This hour first shows you how to put multimedia on your web pages for maximum compatibility with all web browsers, both new and old. It also introduces you to the standard XHTML approach to placing multimedia on web pages, which provides a clear roadmap to the future of multimedia on the web.

Try It Yourself

Before you see how to place multimedia on your web pages in any way, you need to have some multimedia content to start with.

Creating multimedia of any kind can be a challenging and complicated task. If you're planning to create your own content from scratch, you'll need far more than this book to become the next crackerjack multimedia developer. After you have some content, however, this hour will show you how to place your new creations into your web pages.

For those of us who are artistically challenged, several alternative ways to obtain useful multimedia assets are available. Aside from the obvious (such as hiring an artist), here are a few suggestions:

1.	The Web itself is chock-full of useful content of all media types, and stock media clearinghouses of all shapes and sizes now exist online. See the hotlist at the Sams Publishing websitefor links to some of the best stock media sources on the Web.
2.	Don't feel like spending any money? Much of the material on the Internet is free. Of course, it's still a good idea to double-check with the author or current owner of the content; you don't want to be sued for copyright infringement. In addition, various offices of the U.S. government generate content which, by law, belongs to all Americans. (Any NASA footage found online, for instance, is free for your use.)
3.	Many search engines (google.com, yahoo.com, lycos.com, and so on) have specific search capabilities for finding multimedia files. As long as you are careful about copyright issues, this can be an easy way to find multimedia related to a specific topic.
4.	Check out the online forums, Usenet newsgroups, and RSS news feeds that cater to the interests of videographers. As clearly as possible, describe your site and what you want to do with it. Chances are you'll find a few up-and-coming artists who'd be more than happy to let thousands of people peruse their work online.