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Hack 44 Annoy Them with Sound
Drive away your bidders by putting background
music and sound effects in your auctions.
Although
I despise sound in web pages, I feel compelled to show you how to do
it properly so you don't pick up any bad habits on
the street.
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4.13.1 Some Call It Elevator Music
You can insert background music (in either .wav
or .midi format) into your auction with this
line of code:
<bgsound src="http://www.ebayhacks.com//image/library/english/10062_aah.wav" loop=1>
where the loop parameter specifies the number of
times to play the sound. The problem is that the
<bgsound> element has no controls: no way
for your customers to turn off the sound or adjust the volume. In
other words, a poor choice.
The more general-purpose <embed> tag can do
everything <bgsound> does, but it also
includes a controller box:
<embed src="http://www.ebayhacks.com//image/library/english/10062_aah.wav" hidden=false autostart=true loop=true></embed>
The loop=true parameter can be replaced with
playcount=3 to play the sound a specified number
of times and then stop. Go to wwwlcodetutorial.com for further
documentation on embedded objects.
4.13.2 When to Use Sound
Sound can be useful when text and photos
just won't do. For example, if
you're selling a music box, you may want to include
a clip of the music it plays, especially if you
don't know the name of the song. Or, if
you're selling a product that modifies sound (such
as a car exhaust silencer), your customers will appreciate being able
to hear, first-hand, what it sounds like with and without
your product. And obviously, if you're
selling music on CD, tape, record, or DVD, you may want to include a
short clip to entice your bidders.
Even given these perfectly legitimate uses for sound in your
auctions, it still makes sense to give your bidders control over the
sound, rather than simply having it play automatically in the
background.
Making Sound Files
Any modern computer can record sound;
all you need is a microphone to record ambient sounds, or the proper
cables to connect to a stereo and record audio from a tape, record,
or DVD. Just use your computer's sound recorder
application, record a few seconds of audio, and save it into a
.wav file.
The exception is audio CDs, which can simply be inserted into your
computer's CD drive; as long as you have the proper
software, any audio track can then be
"ripped" to create a
.wav file. Nearly all CD recorder software
supports this, as do advanced sound applications such as Sound Forge
(available at www.sonicfoundry.com). Or, if you simply want
to use canned sound effects, go to www.freeaudioclips.com.
Either way, you'll need to ultimately host your
.wav file on a web server, as described in [Hack #59], before you can reference it with
the code in this hack.
4.13.3 Hacking the Controller
The actual audio controller that appears on the
page depends entirely on the browser plug-in currently configured to
handle sound objects. (Note that users without an appropriate plug-in
installed will just see an empty box and won't hear
any sounds at all.) Instead of using the default controller, which is
usually large and rather clumsy, you can integrate the controls into
your auction description quite nicely.
First, we need to modify the <embed> tag to
hide the default controller, turn off the
autostart feature, and give it a name,
mySound, that we can reference with JavaScript:
<embed src="http://www.ebayhacks.com//image/library/english/10062_aah.wav" hidden=true
autostart=false loop=false name="mySound" mastersound></embed>
Since it's now hidden, it doesn't
strictly matter where you put the <embed>
tag. In most cases, it's probably best to place it
at the end of the auction description so browsers will load the rest
of your auction before the sound file. Next, include these links in
your text to control the audio:
<a href=" );">Listen</a>
to the music made by this music box. When you're done, you can
<a href=" );">Pause</a> or
<a href=" );">Stop</a> the music.
( Volume: <a href=">Soft</a> |
<a href=">Medium</a> |
<a href=">Loud</a> )
The "controller," in this case,
will simply appear as ordinary text links in your auction
description. The text links can also be replaced with images to make
a fancier controller.
4.13.4 Quick-and-Dirty Links
If you find that a controller in your description is overkill, you
can simply link to your audio files directly, like this:
<a href="http://www.ebayhacks.com//image/library/english/10062_aah.wav">Listen</a> to the music made by this music box.
The problem is that about a third of your bidders will get a download
prompt and nothing else, and will probably not know where to go from
there. If you choose this solution, you'll want to
include a bit of instruction, telling them to save the files on their
desktops and then double-click the icons that appear.
