I have a geek question about a FrontPage web page I created recently in a viral marketing campaign for a client. The page is www.tonerwarehouse.com/monkey.htm.
There's a jungle scene with 3 monkeys dancing, enclosed in a table with three columns. There's a background image for the table (the jungle backdrop).

o When I view the page in Netscape, the left-hand side of the jungle scene repeats in each column of the table. The jungle scene looks fine in Internet Explorer.

o Also, the background sound (a .mid file) doesn't work in Netscape, although it works fine in Internet Explorer.

I've tried everything I can think of to get this stuff to work, and can honestly say I'm clueless. Any solutions would be deeply appreciated.

With kind regards,

Alice Clagett
for www.tonerwarehouse.com

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_ ____________ _
Alice B. Clagett
2U3D Web Design
P.O. Box 7482
Santa Monica, CA
90406-7482 USA
Phone: 310-393-8167
Toll-free: 877-432-2999
Message/Fax: 310-362-8877
Email: aclagett@2u3d.com
Website: www.2u3d.com
_ ____________ _

The author of that article cautions on using background sounds because they can easily irritate site visitors.

Netscape also does not display a table background the same as IE. It will start the background image over for each cell. It is best to use an image that tiles rather than one that has to display as one big image over all the cells. I believe one alternative might be to use a nested table for your monkeys, on top of a one cell table with your background image.

Nancy

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Wrinkled is NOT one of the things I wanted to be when I grew up!

FP2K Themes and Templates
DreamweaverSites

I tried your suggestions. When I created a table and added the background image, then nested the table with three columns and three monkeys inside the other table, Netscape still began the background image in each nested cell (incredibly).

So, no solution to this one so far. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

As regards the problem with the background sound not playing in Netscape, I surfed to http://www.eurekais.com/brock/bksnd.htm and tried all their suggestions. The best alternative seemed to be <EMBED SRC=xxx.mid" AUTOSTART="TRUE" HIDDEN="FALSE"> but when I substituted that for the bgsound tag, the monkeys stopped dancing as soon as the embedded sound loaded.

Any further suggestions on this problem would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your help, and for any further help anyone can give,

Alice

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_ ____________ _
Alice B. Clagett
2U3D Web Design
P.O. Box 7482
Santa Monica, CA
90406-7482 USA
Phone: 310-393-8167
Toll-free: 877-432-2999
Message/Fax: 310-362-8877
Email: aclagett@2u3d.com
Website: www.2u3d.com
_ ____________ _

Here's an article in much better detail describing the process.

http://www.dreamweaversites.com/tutorials/tablebgs.htm

As for why the monkeys quit dancing, I am not able to help. I have extremely limited experience with both sound and animation that I have no guesses.

I did become quite curious though when I looked at your page source as to why there is so much reference to the hamster dance when it is a page with monkeys?

Anyway, take a look at that article about the tables, and I think you'll solve that problem.

Nancy

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Wrinkled is NOT one of the things I wanted to be when I grew up!

FP2K Themes and Templates
DreamweaverSites

Thanks for answering again. I added the blank gif in the nested table, as you suggested, and the background image is now working fine in Netscape. Hallelujah!

As to the background sound, I surfed around and tried this and that. So far the best thing seems to be to add the following code under the picture:

<embed src="sounds/sn01005_.mid" height="18" width="144" hidden="false" autostart="true" loop="-1" align="center" border="0"><noembed>
<font face="Arial, sans-serif" size="1"> To hear a happy tune,<a href="sounds/sn01005_.mid"> click here</a>.</font></noembed>

In IE, this adds a control panel under the picture, so the user can turn off the sound.

In Netscape, the sound plays, but the control panel doesn't appear. If you wait for a minute it tiles in some of the table above or below what should be the control panel. Sigh. Tried this and that, and still the bug persists. (If anybody has a thought on this, I would be most grateful.)

The monkeys are dancing again. (I don't know why, but am not willing to look a gift horse in the mouth, as it were.)

You asked why hamster dance is in the key words. Hamster dance was the earliest and best known of the "dancing animals" pages. The hamster dance keyword and its variants get lots and lots of traffic. I think that when people surf to "hamster dance" they will most likely be interested in monkeys dancing too. Same genre.

Thanks again for all your help,

Alice

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_ ____________ _
Alice B. Clagett
2U3D Web Design
P.O. Box 7482
Santa Monica, CA
90406-7482 USA
Phone: 310-393-8167
Toll-free: 877-432-2999
Message/Fax: 310-362-8877
Email: aclagett@2u3d.com
Website: www.2u3d.com
_ ____________ _