Music and Video Controls – Don’t Auto Play!

How fast are you with the mouse, just visit some sites that embed music or auto-playing video and you will find out, as you rapidly click around trying to turn off the sound!

It is best when you use video or sound files to be courteous and to allow users to turn it off, turn it down, or even replay it. This is one reason why I do not like embedded background music that has no user controls. Typically a site that plays music onLoad is found to be annoying by most users. Sometimes it is an issue that the reader has their own music on, that they don’t like the music you have selected, that the music starts playing too loud, or even as they really review your site the music plays over and over forcing them to manually turn the sound off. Here’s one for you to check out that is a good example of why you should not have music embedded. It can be fatiguing to listen to the same clip over and over.

My tip for best practice is don’t embed background music in your website! If you do add sound files or videos be courteous and provide playback controls. Make sure to have the play, pause, and repeat buttons and consider not playing the video or sound on page load.

Game Reviews for Parents – Club Penguin

Elementary girls and tweens love this game called Club Penguin. Boys like it too, but typically want more action and prefer Runescape, Silk Road or Voyage Century.

At Club Penguin your kids can dress up like Penguins and waddle around and collect pins, play games like Bean Counter and party at the dance room. They can buy items, go sledding on the mountain and play “rock the ice”. Also the kids can participate in holiday events, gather unique once offered items, become an agent and solve mysteries, and much more.

My two girls like Club Penguin and want to login every day to collect their pins. Here’s where having a computer time monitor is a good idea, we use ComputerTime. As with all online games, kids can easily lose control of the amount of time that they are online and as Club Penguin is fun and can be addictive.

I think Club Penguin is great. It may be too tame for older teens, seventh graders and up, but is wildly popular with the elementary school set. You can click our post title to visit Club Penguin for yourself to see why you too should be waddling around collecting pins!