Hi folks -- so here's a follow-up on an item from Friday -- we had a bunch of you who were reporting problems hearing music embedded in blog entries. (If you don't want the backstory, skip to the end of this entry.)
You'd been putting music in your blogs following tutorials like OneStrangeCat's -- you need to upload the file and use a special tag that only works with Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser (which the AOL software also uses).
The strange thing was that up until a few weeks ago, you were able to hear embedded music. The something changed, and you couldn't.
Now, one thing that's changed recently is that Microsoft has started sending out nagging messages to get people to upgrade their Web browsers from Internet Explorer 6.0 to IE 7.0.
As more people started doing this, we started getting more complaints. I figured there was a connection, but some of the testers here were able to hear the music with IE 7.0. I thought it was a false lead, but the timing was still too much to be a coincidence for me. So I did some sleuthing.
The embedded music trick you're using involves the DYNSRC, or Dynamic Source HTML tag. I did a little Web searching and eventually found this Web message board thread, talking about DYNSRC, background music and the IE 7.0 beta.
According to those folks, the default IE 7.0 browser settings stopped background music (that used the DYNSRC tag) from playing.
I asked a few folks using IE 7.0 to try the settings change they suggest, and it worked. So here's how you fix the problem:
1. In IE 7.0, Click the "Tools" menu, then select "Internet Options."
2. Click the "Security" tab.
3. Click the "Custom Level" button.
4. Scroll through the list until you find an item that says something like "Display Video and Animation on webpage that does not use external media player" -- it will probably say "disable."
5. If it says disable, change it to "enable," then hit "OK" and restart your Internet Explorer browser.
That should fix the problem. Sorry it took so long to figure out. (I blame Bill Gates. Maybe Steve Ballmer.)
Now, there are other ways to get background music to play (including the BGSOUND attribute), but most of them are hacky and like I keep saying, we need to find easier ways to let you do this.
Thanks -- Joe
Tags: aol journals, embedded music, IE 7, internet explorer, dynsrc
6 comments:
Amen to finding a new way to play music. But thank you for your time and for fixing the music. I so love the music and tis was one of my favorite things when I found out you could add music . your the bomb joe!!!!!!!!!!
This jibes with some of what I have heard from people. The complaints I was hearing were that people suddenly couldn't hear the music on their own journals, yet when I visited them, I could hear it fine. There is a simple solution, of course. STOP USING INTERNET EXPLORER!!! Geez, people. If you want things on the Internet to work properly, start using a standards compliant browser, like Firefox.
-Paul
http://journals.aol.ca/plittle/AuroraWalkingVacation/
Joe F***ing Spenserforhire...
I don't know what you did, but it looks impressive.
Good work!
Can I be A Man Called Hawk, instead? -- Joe
how do I get the colors to fade back and forth like they do in the comments sections here, at first look I thought I was having an LSD flash back..........
now that those memories are stored away again, I really think this is cool....
almost groovy man. lol
have a good one....
Missy
Doing this does work, It's easy, and I'm not some techknowitall who whips through stuff like this. Well done, Joe!
Whatever faults AOL may have... if you go to Joe with a problem, he tries to fix it, and he gets back to you to make sure everything worked. That's kick-ass customer service. I appreciate that as much as- if not more than- any bells and whistles on my blog.
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