Playing Sounds in a 3.0 Browser
By Dan Pacheco
WashingtonPost.com
The "3.0" vesions of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer have built-in sound players. If you have used a CD Player, VCR or tape casette player, the interface will be familiar to you.
On WashingtonPost.com, any link to a sound file will appear with musical notes. For example:
 Sound bite of a snare drum (AU, 76K)
The information to the right of the link tells you what kind of sound it is (AU, WAV or AIFF) and how large it is in kilobytes (K). Our standard sounds will always be well under 100K to be accessible with modems, but links outside of our site may be longer.
Playing Sounds in Netscape Navigator 3.0
When you click on the sound link in Netscape Navigator 3.0, a window like this will appear:
To play the sound, just click on the familiar "play" button, which looks like a forward-pointing arrow. The leftmost button will stop the sound, and the right-most button will pause it.
Try it now by clicking on the sound link above. When you click on "Play," you should hear a snare drum.
What's wrong, can't hear it? In that case, you can either turn up the volume on your computer's speakers, or turn up the volume of the clip by clicking on the "slider" underneath the buttons and dragging it to the right. (We've found that many sounds play at less than ideal volumes.)
When you are finished listening to the sound clip, close its window as you would any other window (On Windows 95, click the "X" button at the upper right-hand corner of the window. Note: don't close the main Netscape Navigator window; that will close Netscape completely!)
Playing Sounds in Internet Explorer 3.0
Like Navigator, Explorer 3.0 has its own built-in sound player, which is called ActiveMovie. When you click on a sound clip, you will see a control similar to what you find on a CD Player or VCR:
Explorer will immediately start playing the sound once it's downloaded. After it has finished, you can listen again by clicking on the "Play" button, which looks like a forward-facing arrow.
When finished listening, close it as you would any other window. But remember: don't close the larger window behind it if you don't want to exit your Web browser completely.
Wav/AU for:
 Windows 95
Windows 3.1
Macintosh
Real Audio:
Follow this tutorial for all platforms.
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