MACROMEDIA 38028779 - Macromedia Dreamweaver - Mac, Using Manual, Page: 312 / 582

Chapter 13 312
.aif (Audio Interchange File Format, or AIFF)
format, like WAV format, has good
sound quality, can be played by most browsers, and don’t require a plugin; you
can also record AIFF files from a CD, tape, microphone, and so on. However,
the large file size severely limits the length of sound clips that you can use on
your Web pages.
.mp3 (Motion Picture Experts Group Audio, or MPEG-Audio Layer-3)
format is a
compressed format that makes sound files substantially smaller. The sound quality
is very good: if an MP3 file is recorded and compressed properly, its quality can
rival that of a CD. New technology lets you “stream” the file so that a visitor
doesn’t have to wait for the entire file to download before hearing it. However, the
file size is larger than a Real Audio file, so a whole song could still take quite a
while to download over a normal phone line connection. To play MP3 files,
visitors must download and install a helper application or plugin such as
QuickTime, Windows Media Player or RealPlayer.
.ra, .ram, .rpm, or Real Audio
format has a very high degree of compression with
smaller file sizes than MP3. Whole song files can be downloaded in a reasonable
amount of time. Because the files can be “streamed” from a normal Web server,
visitors can begin listening to the sound before the file has completely
downloaded. The sound quality is poorer than that of MP3 files, but new players
and encoders have improved quality considerably. Visitors must download and
install the RealPlayer helper application or plugin in order to play these files.
Linking to an audio file
Linking to an audio file is a simple and effective way to add sound to a Web page.
This method of incorporating sound files lets visitors choose whether they want to
listen to the file, and makes the file available to the widest audience. (Some
browsers may not support embedded sound files.)
To create a link to an audio file:
1
Select the text or image you want to use as the link to the audio file.
2
In the Property inspector, click the folder icon to browse for the audio file, or
type the file’s path and name in the Link field.