Why do some listening exercises have .WMA and .MP3 options ?
Quite simply, web browser incompatibilities mean that two types of compressed sound files need to be available to users. Microsoft Internet Explorer, which 99.9% of people using espanol-eXtra are using, has its own sound file format called .wma files which are, in fact, compressed to a size twice as small on average of the more widely compatible .mp3 files. Depending on the connection available to users, some users will see the benefit of faster loading times with much more compressed sound files. The average sound file in .wma format on espanol-eXtra is about 40K whereas the same file in .mp3 format is around 90K. It should also be remembered that some Education Authorities’ networks automatically deny access to .mp3 files to prevent music downloads. For this reason, .wma files for the ubiquitous Internet Explorer web browser are also accessible.
