in the browser, click the link. As you can see from Figure 18.12, the browser prompts you with a dialog asking whether you want to save the file to disk to play later (direct download) or if you want to open the file directly from the server and play it within the appropriate audio player (progressive download). Figure 18.12. The browser prompts you with a dialog asking you to either save the file to disk or open it directly in the appropriate audio player.   Embedding Audio Files The upside to linking audio files in the browser is that it gives the user a chance to play the audio file when they want to. If you're a musician, linking your audio files to your web pages gives you the opportunity to allow your fans to download your music directly from your website. Of course, the downside to linking audio files from your web pages is also the fact that your fans can download your music directly from your website. Suppose that you don't want users to freely download and distribute your audio files? You can do one of two things: First, you can sample a small portion of the entire clip and post that on your Web page. Second, you can embed the clip into the web page. When you embed the clip, you can provide users with the ability to stop, play, set the volume, and use a slider to pan to a specific portion of the audio clip. The obvious benefit is that users can listen to the entire clip but cannot save the clip to disk. CAUTION When embedding audio clips into your web pages, it's crucial that you take your user's sensitive ears into consideration. Unsuspecting users who might have accidentally turned the volume up on their speakers could easily browse to your page and be immediately startled when the audio starts.   To embed audio in a Web page, follow these steps: 1. Open the embeddingaudio.htm page. 2. Place your cursor just under the paragraph of text and choose Insert, Media, Plug-in. 3. Browse to the spitalfield.mp3 file located in the Media folder and click OK. A new plug-in icon appears on the page. 4. Depending on the audio player you are targeting, the plug-in icon's size changes accordingly. For Windows Media player, a good size is 320 pixels wide by 45 pixels high. Change the values for the W and H settings in the Properties Inspector so that it resembles Figure 18.13. Figure 18.13. Resize the plug-in icon to coincide with the default Windows Media player size. [View full size image] 5. Save your work. Preview the page in the browser by selecting the Preview in Browser option from the Document bar (or by pressing F12). When the page loads in the browser, the audio clip begins playing in an instance of Windows Media player directly within the browser (see Figure 18.14). Figure 18.14. The audio clip begins playing in an instance of Windows Media player directly in the browser. [View full size image]   NOTE The MP3 file began playing in Windows Media Player because that's my operating systems default media player. Results vary depending on which player is configured to run for a specific file type.