WebCatt's opinion about

Automatic Blaring Midi Music

As a web-browsing cat-person, one of my Pet Peeves (worse than convoluted frames) is stumbling into a page that has automatic background music which starts playing as soon as the page finishes loading (which can sometimes seem to take forever). It is sure to either scare ME or disturb someone nearby (trying to sleep, for instance).

You might never have considered this to be a problem, and it probably isn't for many people, but I myself prefer to browse in silence (except for the hum of the power supply and motherboard fan) and know others who feel the same way.

Yes, of course I can turn my sound off, which is what I do if I really want to view the page quietly, but my usual reaction is to leave the site and go someplace else. I shouldn't need to change my computer configurations, just to deal with a few sites which demand that I listen to their noise!

WebCatt's music and other sounds will all be available as on-demand options.

For instance, you can listen to WebCatt's Theme Song

So what would I advise website maintainers who want their favorite music to be enjoyed by everyone else?

Providing the option to include sound is far more courteous to your visitors than demanding that they listen to your selection.

Please at least put a -Stop the Music- button at the top of your pages! I strongly discourage you from adding Background Sound to your pages. Ideally, I might be able to persuade you to add a sound control console near the TOP of your page, set AUTOSTART to FALSE, and label it with the available music's title. Then those who want background music could start it right away, and those who don't want it will not automatically hit the -Back- button to make it stop. Don't bury the console down at the bottom, just because you think it's ugly and spoils the look of your page.

Many people are incapable of handling their machinery: consider how many inept drivers there are on the roads, for instance. Some people don't know how to adjust sound controls, or perhaps don't realize that they COULD manage to stumble into a relatively loud environment, so they don't consider muting the volume.

If you're one of the rapidly growing number of people who have joined a webring, think about your fellow ring-members. If someone who is startled (or annoyed) by your music BACKs out of it, then you have lost a viewer AND the ring has been broken! This may not seem like much to you, but some people rely on webring links for visitors, and some people like to surf the net through the webrings. The whole point of being part of a webring is to provide collections of similar sites.

I provide the webrings on my site because they are grouped links, not because they might generate traffic for me. The solution for people who don't want to follow the arbitrary path of the webring "Prev|Next|Skip" links is of course to use the "Next 5" or in some cases the "List all" option.

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