What Is an HTML Audio Player?

When using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), an HTML audio player is the part of a webpage that can be used to play an audio file. There are a few different ways in which this type of player can be created or placed on a website, depending on the version used. One of the simplest ways to create an HTML audio player is through the use of a plugin or utility that can be added to a website through HTML coding. Certain codes can also be entered to add audio files to a webpage, with various controls available to affect how they are played.

The function of an HTML audio player is often determined in large part by the way in which it is created, though certain features are fairly common. In general, an HTML audio player is a feature on a website that is added through coding, which can be used to play a particular piece of audio. This can be a small graphical part of a webpage that someone can interact with to play and stop a sound file. There are also ways in which a webpage developer can add audio in the background of a site, which plays automatically regardless of user input.

One of the simplest ways in which an HTML audio player can be incorporated into a website is through the use of a plugin. HTML coding can be fairly easily created that indicates the audio file that should be played and calls for a certain plugin to be used to play it. Plugins are basically small utilities that can be included on a website by simply adding the correct coding for them. Once programmed into the code, an HTML audio player plugin references a player offered by a particular company, and integrates that into the design of a webpage.

An HTML audio player can also be added to a website through the use of code for including sound files. In older versions of HTML, the methods that could be used to do this were fairly limited, often requiring extensive additions to include more than just a link to a sound file. Background audio could be added in these older versions, but the viewer of a site had no control over the audio that would play. More recent versions of the code have made it simpler for an HTML audio player to be included on a webpage, and provide viewers with tools to easily play and stop the audio through the page interface.