Multimedia and Ecommerce Professor Kleist April 21, 2003

Introduction to Multimedia Simple multimedia applications Graphic design New media Visual Culture Programming environment: Maya Programming environments: Macromedia MX platform suite Programming environments:.net as a player Flash, Dreamweaver

Simple Multimedia Apps (Deitel et al., 2001) Sound and video on the desktop DVD platform Performance intensive Large files Streaming vs. full download BGSOUND element, IMG element’s DYNSRC property, Windows Media Player ActiveX control as simplistic approaches to adding Multimedia to HTML pages

BGSOUND The BGSOUND Element Calls an audio clip called jazzgos.mid, and specifies that it should loop exactly once, and because it does not include a BALANCE and VOLUME attribute, each defaults to 0, which indicates maximum volume.

Using Windows Media Player ActiveX control Can use a prebuilt Microsoft ActiveX control called Media Player Active X into the web page. Can use either EMBED or OBJECT that calls either a video player or audio player to play a video Use the EMBED element to play videos because the Windows media player is embedded into web pages Displaying a Video via the EMBED Element Earth Fly By

Graphic Design (Helfand 2001) Screens are our primary source of info, they are ubiquitous Important to designers Apply classic principles of design New media is dynamic, interactive and screen based Can guide visual communication Audiences are global, fractal, constantly on the move

Cyberspace over the Long Run Avatars, or abstract electronic form for human perception Cyberspace as merely “new wine in old bottles” (O’Donnell, 1998) Life of the mind, intellectual life possible in cyberspace Cyberspace may impact geographic communities, internet as substitute, especially as new media creates space, sense of place (Dodge and Kitchin, 2001) Landscapes of information Three dimensional spaces mimic NYSE

New Media (Krueger, 1977, Heller, ed, 2001, Maeda, 2000) Responsive environment Real time interaction between man and machines Artificial realities simulate real world Psychic space, videoplace, new technology Nonlinear, not chronological, interleaved, formlessness

Maya Software From Alias Wavefront 3D software “inspired by the film and video artists, computer game developers and design professionals who use it daily to create engaging digital imagery, animation and visual effects.” Used in Spiderman, Lord of the Rings, Perfect Storm Can download software version to explore with from Maya, index.shtml

Macromedia MX from Computerworld, April 30, 2002 Family of products that interact with each other flagship Web animation and interactivity runtime application Flash MX Includes Dreamweaver MX for web page development, Fireworks MX, Studio MX ColdFusion is changing “from a proprietary application server to one that works with Java 2 Enterprise Edition application servers, and makes it easier to develop Web applications and services”

Macromedia MX, cont. Macromedia products all related, Divide product line into design side, server side, information content managers and players Contribute is web site content management software for firms, do not need to know HTML Authorware allows the development of training tutorials and elearning tools, including measurement and student interaction

Macromedia, cont. Director MX is used to create fixed multimedia content, and works with Flash MX Fireworks MX fits with the Flash and Dreamweaver platforms, and gives bitmap editing support, allows the design of special graphics like buttons, images and rollovers, plus other graphics applications All can import and export with each other, and there is a product called MX Workspace to allow tight integration

ASP Active Server Pages create interactive server pages that are processed in response to client browser request Uses a scripting engine, and processes components just before sending a page to the client, often processing little pieces of code called ActiveX controls ActiveX controls have prewritten types such as adrotator, clock, session tracking, cookies, etc. ASP resides on the server, is server side scripting, more flexible for accessing databases. ActiveX controls allow the server to figure out types of browser, counters, rotate content, etc., and set up branching

.net Microsoft development architecture to integrate across development tools and platforms for end to end web page development New platform for web development that is an attempt to unify and simplify web services Uses.net platform, but includes ASP.net, ActiveX, Forms, xml based web services Allows developers to inherit from their own components, from other developers, from.net framework More interchangeable Powerful, xml productivity without xml hassles, steep learning curve, hard to know when to migrate from ASP

.net, cont. Some firms are migrating from ASP to.net, but these can coexist, even though they have totally different processing engines ASP worked well with VB and Jscript,.net will run more languages New features with.net that allow working with data better, including XML to integrate to any data source like Microsoft SQL or Oracle databases ASP is more complex to mix with Ultradev, but.net is supposed to work with Ultradev, perhaps not right away Ultradev writes in the ASP code for you, so it is easier than.net, but.net is supposed to support Ultradev long term

Dreamweaver Web layout tool, does HTML development in an intuitive way Integrates well with the other Macromedia tools like Flash, Fireworks Does clean HTML Has a button called quick tags to show HTML elements Part of larger Macromedia suite called Ultradev (creates ASP), Coldfusion

Flash Macromedia application for creating interactive, animated movies Important advancement for Multimedia Flash movies have small size files compared to other types of multimedia Uses a function called tweening, which takes the first and last frames of an animation, and automatically generates everything in between Animation files are called “movies”