MIME types/Streaming Audio

I am having trouble getting WMA files to stream by default in Firefox. I am also having trouble getting MP3 files to download by default in both popular browsers, in IE they download, in Firefox they open in QuickTime.

I emailed DreamHost about this and they said I can edit MIME types using .htacess.

I found the .htaccess area on the panel, but I dont really know what to do with it or what I need to edit the MIME tags to say. Honestly I dont even know what an MIME tag is!

Any help would be greatly appreciated, I just dont want to screw anything up.

While you can edit MIME types in the .htaccess, I don't think it will help with what you're perceiving as a problem. The client applications, those browsers in this case, are configured as to how to handle that extension. I might want mp3s to open on my machine in Winamp by default, but someone else may have a different configuration.

Yes, I know its not really a true problem. But I do know that I have seen WMA files on other sites begin streaming in Firefox. So apparently their must be some way of changing things around.

In what way do those files begin streaming? It either has to go to a configured client application or to some sort of plugin/extension in Firefox as far as I know. Which is why I presume the Quicktime plugin is what's configured for that MIME type in your browser.

To the best of my knowledge FF doesn't have any natively configured support for interfacing with mp3 files. I believe that it's always handled through some sort of extension that's been added.

Maybe I am still living in the first Internet wave, but I think you're unable to manipulate how a file is handled by the browsing user's software as a security measure. Granted Active-X controls in IE are a different story however.

I guess I don't really have anything valuable to offer at this point, so i'll prolly just sort of ...trail ......off.

In Firefox, on one particular website, there are WMA files that when clicked open a box that says something about mms:links and asks me if I want to launch the application or cancel, and if you launch the app it begins streaming in WMP.

Youre right though, unless I use the QuickTime plugin FF doesnt do anything but open a download box when it comes to MP3s.

Its not a huge deal I guess, I just want the users of our website to be able to easily either stream or download content. Their choice.