Placing music in a PHP page

[capples3]

I recieved an intresting e-mail from a company today.

Question - how much do you know about adding music to a php site?

The people who are finishing my site are telling me that adding music so that it is continuous and not restarted everytime you click on another link etc cannot be done - however when I log onto the following webiste: http://www.cynthiamartyn.com/

This is exactly what they have done.

So I have mailed these people back and told them that the site in question used flash to achieve this effect. Am I correct in assuming that this is not possible using PHP seeing that you have to reload a page every time it is clicked.

Thanks for the help

[Tarh]

PHP is a server-side language. Music is a client-side technology. They have nothing to do with each other.

If you want to add music to a site, you'll be dealing with the HTML, not the PHP. View the source on the site you linked to see how they did it. I don't know much about HTML when it comes to music, but I believe continuous music can be done with a frames page.

[Mittineague]

Years ago I used to have (cheesy) mid files that were in embed tags with auto-start and auto-loop. But when I thought about the probability that some users wouldn't want sound forced on them endlessly, despite how clever I might think it was, I stopped it.
Now I have some Real (trademark) media files available (not cheesy) that open the RealPlayer when the link is clicked. This stays "live" autonomously until the user closes it.

[kyberfabrikken]

You can use frames, so that you have a small frame, where the music playing code resides, and the main content in a larger frame.

http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager2/ for a javascript/flash based player, which can be embedded in your page.

[davclark]

FWIW, I personally become violent when I view a website that forces music on me.... almost to the point of going on a cross country mission to hunt down and beat the site developer to a pulp with a baseball bat. I was in the car with the engine running and the bat in the trunk last time.