[TheRelief]

I have a graphic on my site than when you click it, it plays a .ram file. What I don't like, however, is that the Real Audio player opens up on the screen. I don't like that. Is there a way to hide or embed the player so that I can still have people click on my graphic and have the sound play without the player showing up?

Can someone look at the source code on my home page (look at the "A personal message from the owner" graphic) and tell me if there is a way to do what I want to do. Let me know if I haven't explained this clearly.

Thanks in advance!

Oh, home page is The Relief

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Try this:

<input type="button" value="start" onclick="document.vid.DoPlay()" name="buttonstart"> <input type="button" value="stop" onclick="document.vid.DoStop()" name="buttonstop">
<embed src="filename.rm" hidden="true" align="baseline" border="0" width="1" height="1" name="vid" type="audio/x-pn-realaudio"></embed>

Although I'm not very familiar with the embed tag...not to mention embed tag with real player which I do not have. So I'm not sure if it'll work.

Edited by lil_cat_luver, 13 November 2005 - 03:10 AM.

[lil_cat_luver]

Try this:

<input type="button" value="start" onclick="document.vid.DoPlay()" name="buttonstart"> <input type="button" value="stop" onclick="document.vid.DoStop()" name="buttonstop">
<embed src="filename.rm" hidden="true" align="baseline" border="0" width="1" height="1" name="vid" type="audio/x-pn-realaudio"></embed>

Although I'm not very familiar with the embed tag...not to mention embed tag with real player which I do not have. So I'm not sure if it'll work.

Edited by lil_cat_luver, 13 November 2005 - 03:10 AM.

[TheRelief]

I tried that - it works except there are "start" and "stop" buttons. I don't want the buttons - I just want my own "a personal message from the owner" graphic to be there, basically as the "start" button.

Can that be done?

Edited by TheRelief, 13 November 2005 - 04:01 AM.

[lil_cat_luver]

I'm not sure. You can try <img src="graphic.jpg" onclick="document.vid.DoPlay()"> instead of the button code.

[TheRelief]

That seems to work except I want the visitor to see the little "hand" that you get when you mouseover a link. How can I add that href coding (or whatever you call it) back in there so they know to click?

(And thank you so much for helping me with this! I've been pulling my hair out for two days)

Oh, and by the way, since the player is embedded now, I don't need to have the link on there anymore for them to download Real Audio player, right?

Edited by TheRelief, 13 November 2005 - 07:07 PM.

[lil_cat_luver]

What's the current mouseover? All links should change to the hand cursor by default... Or you can add

a:hover {
cursor : pointer;
}

to your CSS.


I think you should keep the link. A computer without real player will not display the embedded player. What I see is a white square, and firefox tells me to install additional plugins.

Can I suggest you embed windows media player also? Not everyone has real player.

[TheRelief]

Shoot, I see what you mean about seeing a little white box when viewing the page in Firefox. Any way to get rid of that?

To add windows media player, what would I add to the code? The same things as this, but with the Windows Media Player? : type="audio/x-pn-realaudio" (Do you know the type would be for WMP? And will it play a .ram file?

Also, this site was done a million years ago without CSS. But even with CSS, I'm thinking I won't see the hand when you put the curser over the graphic because it's not really a link. Do think that's the reason? And is there a way to somehow make it think it's a link so that the hand shows?

Edited by TheRelief, 13 November 2005 - 08:53 PM.

[lil_cat_luver]

The white box just means an additional plugin needs to be installed to view the page properly. The only way to get rid of it is to click on it and install the plugin, I guess. I've always used type="application/x-mplayer2" to embed windows media player, but I'm not sure onclick="document.vid.DoStart()" would work in this case. And I'm don't think windows media player supports .ram files

CSS is a must for any site, it saves you a lot of work. And also I remember reading somewhere that tags like <font> slows down the loading time and eats up bandwidth.

This would work with the cursor change, I think:

img#message {
cursor: pointer;
}

And where you had <img src="images/GRAPHICBubble.gif">, just change it to <img id="message" src="images/GRAPHICBubble.gif">

[TheRelief]

Yeah, I know about CSS being a must; I just don't have time to go to the trouble to add to my site properly. Since it's my own site, it's not a high priority right now.

Where does this code go? In with the rest of it? Or somewhere in the header?

img#message {
cursor: pointer;
}


EDITED: Actually, I guess did have some internal CSS going on there, didn't I. So I put that code in there and it seems to be working now - I can see the hand now when I mouseover. I tried to go to the advanced controls and add the plugin, and I marked the box for "hide" but I get this big huge square when I do that. Oy Vey!

It looks and works beautiful in IE. Now I can just figure out how to get rid of that little box when in FF or add the plug-in without there being that big huge outline.

Edited by TheRelief, 14 November 2005 - 12:49 AM.

[lil_cat_luver]

For now, this should go in the header, and with a slight modification.

<style type="text/css">
img#message {
cursor: pointer;
}
</style>

Later on, if you decide to use a stylesheet, it just goes directly into the CSS file, without the <style> tags.

[lil_cat_luver]

I tried to go to the advanced controls and add the plugin, and I marked the box for "hide" but I get this big huge square when I do that.

Um...no idea what you mean by that...

[TheRelief]

I don't really know what I mean either, ha ha.

The site was created in FrontPage (don't laugh; that's all we had at the time). Apparently, to install plugins like the Real Audio, you have to go to Insert - Web Components - Advanced Features and click on Plugins and enter the type or file. I dunno.

I just checked it in Netscape and it's even worse there than in FF. It doesn't know what to do with the rm. file.

Oh geez. I was sooo excited when I thought I finally got this to work the way I wanted. Looks like I have to start from scratch and figure something else out. I just don't want to pay for those audio services when I've been told that it can be done otherwise. And I don't like those stupid play/start/pause buttons because everyone's doing them.

Let me know if you have any ideas? I really, really appreciate your help!

[lil_cat_luver]

I don't see why you need to install a plugin from frontpage? That wouldn't really help, since the plugin needs to be installed on errm..the viewer's side?

Anyways, anytime you embed audio, you're going to be taking a chance, seeing that not everyone will have the software/plugin needed. If you're going to start all over again, I think I would suggest using javascript? I don't really know much about that, but I'm sure you can find one of those "stupid play/start/pause button" scripts and modify it to your liking

Edit: I just remembered something about the <noembed> tag for netscape. http://www.utoronto....HTML/embed.html this page can explain it better than I can, haha.

Edited by lil_cat_luver, 14 November 2005 - 01:11 AM.

[TheRelief]

I already tried the Javascript route and couldn't find a thing. Poop!

[lil_cat_luver]

Hmm, I suppose just stick with <embed> and <noembed> tags for now, at least IE and netscape will work. I'll try to find something tomorrow, or probably someone else will. You can also try posting in the programming forum.