Standards Compliant method to add MP3s to pages

Introduction

This page features four standards-compliant methods to embed an MP3 file into a page. None of these four methods currently works reliably across even a minimal list of modern browsers. Despite most instillations of Windows featuring at least one media player capable of playing MP3s, it seems that none of the four methods below can predictably bring up Media Player 2. On some test machines, Media Player 2 loaded quite happily, where as on others with a very similar set-up, it loaded, but failed to find the file. I guess the configuration of the player and file associations on the individual machines must have played a part, which makes this test currently unsuccessful.

IE / Active X method

This uses a classid and Active X, so only works in IE. Because the codebase attribute uses an Apple URI, when this method works, it tends to use QuickTime.

Works

IE 6 (W2K)

Displays "Error text"

Mozilla 1.4

IE 5 (Mac OS9)

Opera 7 (W2K)

Standards Version (audio/mp3)

This uses the type attribute to specify audio/mp3. No media player is specified, as it is the file format which is important.

Works

IE 6 (W2K)

Mozilla 1.4

Displays "Error text"

IE 5 (Mac OS9)

Opera 7 (W2K)

Standards Version (audio/mpeg)

This uses the type attribute to specify audio/mpeg. No media player is specified, as it is the file format which is important.

Works

Mozilla 1.4

Displays "Error text"

IE 5 (Mac OS9)

Opera 7 (W2K)

Displays empty textarea

IE 6 (W2K)

Specifying the media player

This uses the type attribute to specify application/x-mplayer2. This sometimes brings up MediaPlayer 2, a standard application on windows machines which have a sound card.

Works

IE 6 (W2K)

Mozilla 1.4

Displays "Error text"

IE 5 (Mac OS9)

Opera 7 (W2K)