Ask Jacob
Why will a website play music on a PC and not a Mac?
Tuesday, April 17, 2007 / Mac OS X, Software
Why won’t the music play on a MacBook Pro for the website www.furbabyrescue.com but a Windows-based PC allows all the music to play on that website?
This is actually not a Mac Vs. Windows problem, but a browser-specific issue. That web page uses a “bgsound” tag in its HTML source, which starts the music playing. This tag only works with Internet Explorer. All other browsers, whether on Windows or Mac OS, will ignore it. There was once a version of Internet Explorer for the Mac, which I still have a copy, and I tested the page with it. Sure enough my Mac was playing “BeeGees_ToLoveSomebody.wav” as soon as the page stopped loading. This is one of the problems with Internet Explorer, it ignores standards of web programming and instead does things its own way. If the world was owned entirely by Microsoft there would be no problem, but luckily we have choices. As more people choose web browsers that are not Internet Explorer, web developers will need to adhere to standards. Only then will the web look, and sound, the same to all.
