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asked for it. You should link to it with text like 'watch the video' or 'listen<br />
now', and leave it up to them what they want to do. Note that this also gives<br />
you a useful chance to ask the visitor which media player they'd prefer,<br />
instead of just trying to play things with one they might not have.<br />
Audio on the Web.<br />
Having been stung one too many times, there are a lot of users who only<br />
browse the web with their speakers turned off. For this reason, you need to<br />
give them something clearly useful to make it worth their while to turn them<br />
back on, and you need to warn them in advance that they will need to.<br />
Once you've done that, what kind of content should you provide? Unless<br />
you're a radio station or you're providing an audio feed of something else<br />
that's happening live, streaming audio is generally a bad idea. You should<br />
also note that there is no royalty structure in place for web use of<br />
commercial music, so you can't really offer anything in that way either.<br />
Instead, you should look at offering downloads of spoken-word mp3 files,<br />
divided into 'episodes' of about ten minutes or so in length. What you want<br />
to offer is entirely up to you: you could record some motivational speeches,<br />
or read the Bible, or whatever, if you think your visitors would appreciate it.<br />
The only rule is to keep it relevant and keep it useful – no-one wants to<br />
download and listen to plain old ads.<br />
It's worth noting that web audio is undergoing a bit of a renaissance right<br />
now as a result of the iPod and so-called 'podcasting'. This is the practice of<br />
making short spoken audio segments available in a way that makes them<br />
easy to download to an iPod (or other portable music device) and listen to<br />
on-the-go. This is a practice that grows every day, and is well worth getting<br />
into.<br />
Video on the Web.<br />
What can you use video for on the web? Well, if you have a product you want<br />
to demonstrate, you could record it in action and offer that video for<br />
download. Generally, though, web video tends to be restricted to news and<br />
e-learning. In a commercial context, this means 'webinars' – videos that<br />
offer the web equivalent of a seminar presentation, made available for<br />
The Web Design Guide for Newbies |98
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