Kate
The code I used was extremely simple, it was just this:
<BGSOUND SRC="anyname.wav">
<EMBED SRC="anyname.wav" AUTOSTART="TRUE" HIDDEN="FALSE">
To be honest that is the code I should have used, but I did it with just the
background sound tag at first, to test it, so the code I produced was this:
<BGSOUND SRC="/courses/1/John1/content/_2353_1/john2.wav">
<p><img height="132" alt="Welcome from John Edmonstone"
src="/courses/1/John1/staffinformation/_201_1/johncircle.c1int1.jpg"
width="132" border="0"></p>
<p>A welcome message from your tutor</p
That works with IE, but my understanding is that if you use the embed tag
this will work with both IE and Netscape, though I haven't tested that.
Putting both in is supposed to cover all bases and when I tried the page
like that it did work for me with IE. It is suggested that putting both tags
in can cause conflict for IE, but I didn't find it to be so. You'll notice
with the URLs that I've cut them down to relative addresses and I've cut out
the string of numbers that Blackboard produces for its document URLs. The
reason here was that I was wrong when I suggested absolute addressing works.
It worked the first time only, but when I logged off and then logged on
again Blackboard created an entirely new string of numbers for the URLs of
the documents (I eventually worked out) and so my addresses wouldn't work.
It must be a database function and is probably how BB tracks individual
instances of students accessing materials. So I cut the addresses back down
to the relative paths you see above and they worked again. As I said, to put
the code in I simply pasted what you see above into the text box for
announcements, with the HTML option selected, and I made sure that there
were no head or body tags in it. That's all. Maybe just a lucky first time
guess, though I must say I was pleased with having puzzled out how to do it.
The secret was in loading image and wav files to documents as stand alone
files - and that is interesting too, because a .wav file will then play with
IE.
John Edmonstone
-----Original Message-----
From: Kate Boardman [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 29 May 2002 17:26
To: John Edmonstone
Subject: RE: Neat Trick
John,
Congratulations! But could you maybe give us a bit more detail - I've been
trying to recreate it not terribly successfully. Can get it to work in IE,
but not netscape, and had to abandon usual dreamweaver html for <embed wav>.
If you could spare the code that does it well I'd be grateful.
Kate
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kate Boardman
Learning Technologies Team
IT Service
University of Durham
South Road
Durham DH1 3LE
Tel.: 0191 374 1502
Email: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Web: http://www.dur.ac.uk/k.l.boardman
-----Original Message-----
From: MLE Blackboard/Courseinfo userslist
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of John Edmonstone
Sent: 29 May 2002 15:55 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Neat Trick
I worked out a neat little trick for an intro to my Blackboard course. As
you know you can write HTML for the announcements page, which will then
display in the Announcements area. I wrote a short piece of HTML which
contained my image and a welcome message, that I'd recorded as a .wav file,
as the background sound which played on loading. I then posted these two
files into documents, displayed their links and clicked on the links to find
out their filepaths. I then pasted the relevant file paths into my html for
the announcements page. The result is that when you open up my course you
have my image and a welcome message on the announcements page - which plays
automatically. It's not narcissism, but looking for ways to add some fun
functionality. I used the absolute urls for the two files, but found that it
works too if you strip them down to the relative addresses.
John Edmonstone
Cardonald College
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