TIP 196: Placing Windows Media on a Page

To use Windows Media files in your pages, you'll first need to place a Windows Media object onto the page. With the object selected, you will see four tabs across the top: Basic, More, Attribs, and Windows Media. Link the Windows MediaObject to the source file in the Basic tab of the Inspector palette. Clicking the Windows Media tab reveals an additional set of four subtabs where you can set attributes for the Windows Media object, such as Autoplay, which begins playing the clip as soon as the page loads into the browser, and Enable Controls, which gives the viewer a set of controls to pause, stop, and start the clip (Figure 196).

Figure 196. The Windows Media tab of the Inspector palette reveals four subtabs where you can set additional attributes.

It's important to note that the Windows Media Object only writes the <object> tags into the source code and not <embed> tags. This is fine for Windows browsers, but for the clip to play on Macintosh browsers you'll need to include <embed> tags. To do so follow these steps:

1.	Select the Windows Media object on the page.
2.	Click the Split Source button to reveal the source code. The code for the selected object will begin with <object> and end with </object>.
3.	Type the following into the source code within the object tags: <embed type="application/x-mplayer2" src="/books/4/333/1/html/2/filenname.ext" width="xxx" height="xxx"></embed>. Replace filename.ext with the filename of the source clip and enter the actual pixel dimensions of the clip instead of xxx. (If you are unsure of the path and/or filename, look for the code that says <param name="url" value="your/filename/here.wmv"> and copy the path written into the value.)

Finally, be aware that if the visitor to the page does not have the Windows Media Player, the content will not play for them.