Mystery: how is IE plalying those MIDIs?

[Louise]

Does anyone know how EI6 SP1 can play midis on webpages if
it is not using the 3 obvious players on my XP system
which are WMP & Real Player & Quicktime Player? I am
trying to figure out a temporary workaround to the problem
I am having with erratic sound--my warantee carrier has
offered me a new sound card, but in the meantime I need to
work with some midis and wavs on webpages so would like to
keep the sound going on those two file types until the
computer goes in for repair. In a previous post (Dec26
11:25am PT "No sound..), I could play everything EXCEPT
midis, now I can play ONLY midis. If I knew how IE was
playing its midis, maybe that would help. The webpage I'm
using as my "standard test" for IE is www.macdougall.org
(bagpipe midi when it opens). At the moment WMP and
Quicktime have no sound (they play the files, but
silently) and Real Player can play a midi with sound from
my harddrive at the same time as IE is playing a different
midi from a website. So how is IE playing it? I thought IE
had to use one of the players. Any ideas would be very
welcome.
Mystified on the Westcoast, Louise.
P.S. Even more mystifying is this: if the sound stops
functioning on both IE and Real Player, I can trigger them
to start functioning again by opening www.tiverton.org.
Strangely, the piano midi when that website opens always
plays in IE, and then all midis will play again. !!???

 

[Charlie Tame]

From the clan web page...

<bgsound src="tunes/dunolly.mid" loop="1">

This command will play midis in IE with no help from anywhere, however it is
not a great command because there's no way to implement a shut up button...
it just plays. If you are not careful you will drive your page viewers mad.

This page does it properly with no controls but in this case you can add
controls if you want simply by changing the variables from 0 to 1...

http://home.mchsi.com/~resident.resident/test1.htm

Use View Source to see the code used.

Then look at this page, note the width and height commands are missing
allowing the player to use it's own defaults and that a couple of the lower
variables have been switched to 1. There are two instances of each variable
/ command because it gives two alternative playing methods... ActiveX and
<embed> The latter should allow it to play in none MS browsers.

http://home.mchsi.com/~resident.resident/test2.htm

Incidentally it sounds like your other problem is not the sound card...

Charlie

 

[Guest]

Hi Charlie,
Thanks for all the great information about how IE handles
midis. I know what you mean about webpages that play long
midis with no controls, including the ones in my last
message. I really appreciate your comments on the 2
sample sites you sent--I'll have a look at the source
code.
About IE playing midis "with no help from anywhere"--do
you know, does Front Page 2000 work the same way, that is,
when I preview a webpage directly in Front Page
(not "Preview in browser"), is the sound being played
directly by Front Page "with no help from anywhere" or is
Front Page somehow using IE? Why I ask is because the
sound problem started when I was creating a website in
Front Page. All of a sudden neither FP nor IE would play
midis on any website pages, though they would play wavs.
And now neither IE nor FP play wavs, only midis. If FP
were defaulting somehow to IE there would be a bit of
logic in that.

I got IE SP1 after this problem started because I assumed
it was related to IE. Also MKB Article#319303 says that
SP1 fixed another kind of sound problem in IE. But SP1
didn't help any.

About the computer company offering me a new sound card:
their tech did a phone diagnosis at a point when the
computer had no sound at all, not even for Windows Log
On. He spent about 20 minutes including uninstalling and
reinstalling all the items in Sound,Video & Game
Controllers (under System> Properties>Hardware>Device
Manager>). That didn't help. But no sense replacing the
card if that's not the problem. Would you be willing to
venture an opinion?

Your help is much appreciated. Louise

 

[Charlie Tame]

The reason for those "Test" pages dates back to a time soon after I upgraded
to IE6 from the "Beta" version.

We'd had a couple of pages with midis for a while and never any problems but
the IE6 release version stopped playing them. I found some blurb on the MS
site(s) about the <embed> command and the code on those pages, suggesting
that I should use that instead of just <embed>.

Not only did it "Fix" the pages it was on it also "Fixed" something that
made unmodified pages work.

I tested this on another computer (It's impossible to "Undo" whatever is
changed) and the same results were found. Seems like the first time you use
a page with that code makes the difference.

I imagine FrontPage does use IE quite a lot, and <bgsound> is an MS only
implementation as far as I know. It's thus relatively useless, as well as
lacking in controls.

I'd be interested to know if viewing those pages makes any difference to
other pages you view... I don't know the answer, only that after a lot of
searching I found that happened by accident.

I don't really like FrontPage, at least not the original one. Had a bad
habit of doing just what you wanted on the screen unless you then edited the
file in which case all hell broke loose. If you want a good editor that you
can flip between "Preview" and manual typing (with a lot of preset options)
there is one at www.evrsoft.com that's free and compares with pro packages
like Macromedia Homesite. Lot's of examples and a decent help file, however
there is one example your antivirus may object to. It is not malware, it's
an example of source code, therefore harmless unless you choose to compile
and run it (even then it's pretty harmless).

What I suggest is that you review the sound settings carefully (do you have
the little system tray speaker icon?) and make sure that you select
"Options"... there may be some setting sliders that are not displayed with
the default options and they could be the ones you need to enable.

Do you have any sound editing software that may change things? I can't think
of any that does but it's possible I guess.

If you have a look in the stationery newsgroup for OE there are some tips
there... I know OE is not the question but HTML stationery is displayed in
an IE window so the regulars there get to know what works and what
doesn;t... of course they are only really concerned about OE and not other
system.

This link will take you straight to the group to subscribe if you want. To
see most stuff you want to turn off the preview pane in OE else it gets all
confused <g>

news://news.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.windows.inetexplorer.ie6_outlookexpress.stationery

Charlie

 

[Guest]

Charlie! I found the sound! All of it: midis, wavs, mp3s,
CDs and even "Empty Recycle Bin". Either this is just
another total fluke, or you are one smart cookie! For the
time being, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt
on this!

You were right about the sound sliders having been reset
to some strange levels. Why and how they are/were being
reset to different levels at different times I don't know
yet, but at least it appears I can control the sound so I
can finish the project I'm working on. Since I reset them
several hours ago, they haven't moved.

This is probably something the computer company tech would
have caught had he been looking at the computer directly,
but over the phone all he asked me to look at was if any
of the mute boxes were checked and they weren't. Until
you mentioned it, I didn't know the significance of the
slider postitions--I see now that they can create the same
effect as mute on various types of sound files, or all of
them at once. All I've done previously for sound control
is turn the knob on my speakers...unfortunately, there's a
lot I don't know about computers...

No, I'm not aware of anything on my computer that could be
affecting the settings, but obviously something is, or
was. And IE is still implicated somewhere in this
scenario. Yes, your pages did affect things on my
computer, and, as I mentioned before, so did that
Tiverton.org homepage. I'll look at that a bit more
closely after New Years and tell you what I noticed.

What I did discover tonight is that Front Page and IE can
play sound independantly of each other, since I can have
Front Page playing a wav in FP Preview while IE is playing
a midi on an Internet homepage. Also I noticed that if I
try to play a sound file by using the "Open with" option,
I'm offered the choice of my 3 players plus IE and FP, all
above the line where Choose Program begins. I imagine
that means that XP recognizes those 5 programs as ones
that I have used to play sound files. So that appears to
shoot down my theory about FP defaulting to IE. However,
there seems to be some kind of a bad connection between
the 2 right now because when I try to "Preview in Browser"
in FP, instead of opening IE, FP crashes. Consistently.

That may just mean that it's time to reboot, but with the
sound working right now, I don't want to take a chance on
rebooting till I get this project done, if I can get away
with it. So I'll try to get this thing done tomorrow
(hmmm, that would be later today...I see it's after
midnight) & I'll post back here to the newsgroup after New
Years.

Thank you sooooo much for your excellent and detailed
advice. Have a lovely News Years, and please check back
here about Jan 3. With much gratitude, Louise.

 

[Charlie Tame]

Glad some progress was made, be interesting to see if settings change
again... might mean a website is doing it.

Charlie