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As technology gets better and better, more and more websites are containing all manner of media. Both HTML 4 and the newer HTML 5 handle embedding files in a nice and elegant manner. Virtually any file of can think of can be handled by the embed tag. While you can use the embed tag to handle almost any file type, there are common files that are embedded in most websites.
Most web developer’s use embeds for video files of various types. To save space and loading time, rather than using video files that you would normally have on your computer, video files are first converted to SWF format. This format is smaller and handled by the web server at runtime, providing the quickest load to the web page. In order to embed a Flash file, which is the common name for SWF, you must include the handler code from Adobe.
Another use for the embed tag is to include video on your website that is not stored on your own web server. When embedded a video, you have full control over the appearance of the video on the web page. Even if the original video is 800 by 600 pixels in size, when embedding the file you can specify a smaller or larger size. The developer also has control over whether the file will start playing immediately and all kinds of different controls.
The embed tag gives a universal control to various file types when placing them on your web site and allows full and easy control over what would normally be a difficult process.