The Thing, as I've been calling it (for lack of a more creative name), uses HTML, JavaScript, and, most importantly, Microsoft's Active Movie Control, which is built into Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0. The AMC has a somewhat misleading name, since it handles both audio and video, but never mind that; it's a damn fine control, and we're not going to let semantics stand in the way of our good time.
The Active Movie Control, in tandem with your favorite client-side scripting language, allows you to have great control over the properties of your sound and video. You can use it to do the basics, like telling the media to play, pause, or stop, as well as controlling more esoteric functions like changing the volume, panning (on stereo files), varying the speed at which the media play back, and changing the start and end points. You can even determine which elements of the control are visible to the browser, and whether or not their properties can be altered by the user.
What's more, the Active Movie Control will play back almost every file format under the sun. Supported types include AVI, MOV, WAV, MIDI, MPEG-layer1, layer2, and (in what could well be the most
subversive gesture Microsoft has ever made) the file format of choice for Internet audio pirates around the world, MPEG3.
The music that The Thing currently makes could be classified as Jungle, or Drum & Bass. It uses a slightly modified version of perhaps the most widely known and (over-) used drum loop as its basis - the Amen. The Amen loop was culled from the R&B/gospel tune "Amen Brother" by the Winstons and has managed to work its way into perhaps thousands of songs in many styles of music. I used it here because I happen to have a licensed version taken from a sample CD, because it's instantly recognizable, and because I'm too lazy to grab one of my own beats off of my Mac and shuttle it over to my PC.
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