Sound or Not?

Sound, yes or no?

Section 1 - Introduction
Section 2 - Basics
Section 3 - Next Level
      Lists
      Basic Tables
      Advanced Text
      Marquee
      Meta
      Sounds
         Sound files
         Links to files
         Embedded files
         More embedded files
         Should you?
         You Try It!
      Comments
Section 4 - Advanced
Section 5 - Publishing
Section 6 - Extras
Appendices

Let's keep this simple and to the point. Sound is fun, but there are problems. Here are several:

Most sound files are huge
Midis usually sound awful
Old computers can't handle downloading sounds
Takes up a lot of bandwidth
Background sounds are ANNOYING
Most of the time, sound is unnecessary.
Not all sounds are compatable with all computers

With that being said, I'm going to encourage you to use sounds very sparingly. If every page has a sound, that's way too much. Background music is more annoying then inviting, and if people are on the web at school or work, it can cause more problems.

Don't believe me? Look around the web at sites with sounds. I'm sure you'll soon understand what I mean by offensive.

Bonus
Here's a gem you get for reading this page. You can use the <embed> tag for more than just sound. If you have a movie file, you can embed that too. It's done exactly the same way, except that the height and width must be set differently. Here's an example, but be warned, it might take a while to load.