Positioned Elements and OS Controls, Applets and Plug-ins

Built-in Plug-ins

Both browsers include the ability to play sounds and video. Navigator ships with its own Live Audio and Live Video plug-ins. Explorer for Windows relies on the Windows Media Player.

If you install a third-party plug-in, with similar capabilities, like Apple's QuickTime, for example, it may register itself as the default media player. In Explorer, you can force the built-in Media Player to kick-in by using the <OBJECT> tag and the relevant CLASID.

Manipulating plug-ins, however, is beyond the scope of this article.

The above introduction was necessary, since the two media items included in this page will not always be played by the built-in players. The result you get depends on the third-party plug-ins you have installed, and how you have registered them.

Audio

You should have audio controls for a "click" sound in the table below. Pass the bordered positioned element above over the controls. Both browsers have a persistence problem.

Video

For the video example, we have used the sample .mov that ships with the QuickTime download, which, of course, is copyright by the Apple Computer Corporation, but freely available. Again, both browsers have a problem.

Notes:

In the interests of simplicity and cross-browser compatibility, we have used the EMBED tag. HTML4 insists on the use of the OBJECT tag, still not very well supported by Navigator.

Remember, the examples above may have caused a third-party plug-in to kick-in. The results, and the problem, are the same, regardless.

On the next page, we'll use a Java applet as an example. And, yes, those of you using Navigator will get the dreaded "Starting Java...." message.