Map of Sounds - Java Demonstration

<bgsound "src="morningb.wav" " loop="infinite"> A Webbits Creation: The Village at Dusk (Please be patient - it takes time to download)

This page demonstrates hot spots on an image where you can click to activate events. In the scene above, if you click on a hot spot, you will hear a sound.

A Media Player Window opens for each sound requested when you click on a hot spot. Once the sound has been downloaded, it will begin playing automatically. You can replay a sound yourself from its Media Player Window. Remember to close all Media Player Windows when you have finished with them.

BACKGROUND SOUNDS
I put some bird sounds in the background for the whole page. These sounds are so natural that sometimes when I am testing this page, I think that I am hearing the birds chirping outside my house when it's really my computer.

The background bird sounds stop playing if you play any other sound, so if you want to hear the birds again, just reload the page.

The background sounds will be downloaded automatically when you first open the page. The sounds attached to each object are downloaded as needed.

How do you create your own Web Pages with Image Maps and hot spots?

In the HTML coding the USEMAP command indicates that there is a map of hot spots on an image.

e.g. <IMG USEMAP="#villagebg "SRC="villagebg.jpg">
To define the tractor hot spot and to attach a sound it, you would add the following code:
<MAP name="villagebg"><AREA shape="rect" coords="474,230,498,247" href="tractor.au">

You must supply the pixel coordinates for the hot spots. I used a shareware program called Mapedit which generated these coordinates automatically for me. All I had to do was to stretch rectangles over the selected objects. Then I attached the sounds to each hot spot.

DOWNLOAD CONSIDERATIONS
To test the sounds for this page, you will need to be patient to allow time for them to download. Once they have been downloaded, however, you can reuse and reload them without waiting.

SOUND FILES
Sound files for Web Pages must be in a recognized sound file format, e.g. .wav or .au format. I converted CD sounds and .wav file sounds to .au format using a shareware program called GoldWave.

The .au sound file format is commonly used on the Internet. The .au files used here are in 8 bit format and the sampling rate is 8012 Hz which is very low quality when compared to today's Hi-Fi Audio, but it does mean that the files can be kept reasonably small.

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