for Technophobes

There are, so far as I am aware, more ways to get music onto the net than there are days in a month. The subject is so big it couldn't be contained in one dedicated book. We intend, therefore, at this stage, to focus only on the two current front runners, which should be sufficient for your average web designer. These two formats are MIDI and RealAudio. MIDI, which stands for ... erm, er, musical something, blah de blah, digital, um interface ? ... which stands for, well for MIDI ... has proven a popular format because all it technically speaking is, are a series of on-off commands. Because it doesn't contain any waveform information, the file sizes are tiny .. and therefore perfect for the net ... provided instrumental music is your thing. Here is an example of MIDI in action. Kind of icky isn't it? On the other hand if you aren't hearing a slightly tacky version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" at this point, (or being offered the chance to play it in the box above) and in fact are experiencing perfect, naked, silence instead, then you need to learn how to configure your browser to hear this embedded rainbow.mid file ... thus downgrading your experience to match ours. We'll be dealing with that process shortly so don't panic just yet...we'll always wave flags when it's time to panic ;) Click to continue

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