System Requirements
If you can view this homepage, you already have satisfied quite a number of system requirements. For convenience I will list them. The requirements are:
A Computer with a suitable Operating System
A computer running the operating system OS-n (Macintosh), Windows (95, 98, XP, Vista or 7) or Linux. The computer must have an operational Internet connection.
A Screen Resolution of at least 1024 x 768 pixels
In this resolution the home page will fit completely in the browser, provided you have not opened too many tool bars. With higher reolutions, you have more space around the content. I found out that the screen resolution 800 x 600 pixels is so rare, that I can consider it obsolete. Hence I did not design the homepage for this resolution. Nevertheless the content (the light yellow area) fits inside 800 x 600, so reading will be relatively comfortable. Access of the menus requires some play with the scrollbars.
A Web Browser which supports Cascaded Style Sheets (CSS)
Well, most recent browsers do so. I tested the website with Internet Explorer 5.5, -6 en -7, en Firefox (also refer to the story about the browser quirks). I do not expect problems with higher versions of Explorer, Opera and Safari. If there are problems with the layout in these browsers, please let me know. In that case I will extend my test browser suite and think about some more CSS corrections.
A General MIDI Synthesizer to play the Music
Such a synthesizer can be a sound card with built-in hardware MIDI synthesizer, a combination of a software synthesizer and a sound card, or a MIDI interface with connected MIDI module such as a Roland Sound Canvas. Mind that the quality of the sound heavily depends on your MIDI hardware. Windows has a standard built-in software MIDI synthesizer with a rather poor sound, but what the heck, you get an impression of the music anyway. Instead I have been using the Yamaha SYXG50 plugin for many years, this software offers a lot better sound quality. Unfortunately Yamaha stopped support and update for this plugin, so if I have to "upgrade" to Vista or Windows 7, I will need new MIDI hardware as well. Do not forget to make the correct settings for the MIDI synth in the "Audio" department of the Control Panel.
In the mean time I upgraded to Windows 7. Unfortunately the MIDI support has not improved, there is still the old GS Wavetable pluging with the tin can sound. Using a virtual machine, I can still use the old Yamaha plugin, but I guess that's not an option for the most of you. So the sound will remain a bit poor, I'm afraid. Converting all to mp3 is no option for me, because I would need one Gigabyte of web space or so, and tha't a little bit too expensive.
A Plugin which enables your Web Browser to access the Sound Hardware
For Internet Explorer this plugin usually is the Windows Media Player. For Firefox you need a plugin like Quicktime (which seizes power in your system immediately, pushing aside Windows Media Player even in Internet Explorer). Do not forget to set the correct MIME types for the plugin: audio/midi must be part of the list.
Attention: I noticed with my transition to Windows 7 64 bits, that it is quite necessary to use the latest version of QuickTime. If not, you might not be able to change the File Types and MIME types within the Preferences of the program, causing the music not to play within Firefox. I was quite happy to find this out, because I use Firefox as a test browser for my pages. Funny enough Internet Explorer does not play the MIDI when I do the local tests, so... I am just relieved that it works now.
I use the HTML command EMBED with relevant parameters which invokes the sound plugin with play, fast forward and rewind buttons. Officially this command is deprecated in the XHTML standard, but it will work in the transitional versions. I considered the EMBED command better than the good old BGSOUND command, which fails to give you the options to start and stop the music. The look and feel of the music player depends on the installed plugin.
An installed Copy of Acrobat Reader or equivalent PDF Document Viewer
You need this software to view the sheet music. Acrobat Reader is a free download on the Adobe web site. Minimum required version is 3.0. While generating the PDF files, I switched on the font embedding, so the rather exotic musical note fonts should be visible despite the fact that you do not have them on your system.