HTML downloading multimedia
Audio and video make a webpage more interactive resulting in a more interesting and entertaining experience. Webpage visitors also have the ability to play that an audio or video file after they already left the webpage it was on.
This lesson focuses on:
- Why download multimedia?
- Downloading audio
- Downloading video
- Copyright issues
Why download multimedia?
Offering audio and/or video on a webpage is one thing, but what if your users want to play an audio or video file after leaving a webpage without going back to it? Your website visitors can indeed do this by downloading the audio or video file, and you can do it too. The purpose of downloading multimedia is to be able to play an audio or video file after leaving a webpage and not necessarily having to come back to it.
There is no special functionality required to make it possible. All major browsers provide the ability to download an audio or video file from a webpage.
Downloading audio
To provide an audio file for download, you should have a link to open that audio file in the browser by itself without a webpage.
Example:
Output:
Once the user clicks on the link and sees the audio in the browser by itself without a webpage, they can go to the File menu, and click "Save As", "Save Page as", or whatever variation the text is for the save option in their web browser and save it to their computer.
NOTE: Sometimes the audio object will not load in the browser by itself, instead a box will appear asking you if you want to download the audio.
Downloading video
To provide a video file for download, you should have a link to open that video file in the browser by itself without a webpage.
Example:
Output:
Once the user clicks on the link and sees the video in the browser by itself without a webpage, they can go to the File menu, and click "Save As", "Save Page as", or whatever variation the text is for the save option in their web browser and save it to their computer.
NOTE: Sometimes the video object will not load in the browser by itself, instead a box will appear asking you if you want to download the video.
Copyright issues
If you have audio or video on your pages that is copyright (copyrighted by you), you may not want people downloading them. Or maybe you don't mind people downloading them, as long as they don't use them on other webpages without claiming where they came from.
The fact of the matter is, you cannot prevent people from not downloading audio or video from your webpages. Even if you don't provide a direct link, someone can go into the source code of one of your pages, find out the location of the video or audio file, put it into the browser, and then download it.
The important thing is that you do have that copyright. If you do, and then you see one of your copyright audio or video files somewhere else where it's not authorized to be, you can go and take legal action. Just know that you cannot prevent the potential downloading of these items.
It's also important to note that the same rules apply to you as well. If you place copyright items on your pages (copyrighted by someone else), then whoever those copyright items belong to can take legal action as well.
