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Online Multimedia is the presentation of information with text, audio, animation and video on the web. In the beginning, the majority of websites on the internet were composed of static text and images, largely in part because of restricted bandwidth. But with the proliferation of broadband, and the increasing ubiquity of media players such as QuickTime, Real, and Flash on the web, the Internet has suddenly come alive. Because multimedia is so much more effective in grabbing attention than static pages, most internet ads and marketing websites use multimedia to attract audiences.
But aside from providing a better aesthetic for marketing, multimedia has various real-world uses. Multimedia helps e-learning systems be more effective by providing simulations or actual videos of how a product is used. Multimedia also enhances the effectiveness of applications, by making more intuitive and interactive interfaces.
Perhaps the most pervasive technology used to present multimedia is Macromedia Flash. While QuickTime, Real, and Windows Media Player formats provide high quality video and audio, the Flash format also integrates interactivity by allowing developers to manipulate individual objects through scripting. Flash files are also compressed and lightweight, and the player is a mere 668K download and ships with most computers pre-installed. Most players require large download times.
Macromedia Shockwave is another type of player used to present multimedia. It is less ubiquitous than the Flash player, but it features a more robust set of authoring tools and supports 3D. However, with the current support for video and a more robust scripting language in Flash, more developers are abandoning Shockwave for Flash. The Viewpoint Experience Platform is an emerging multimedia development platform that mixes and is capable of displaying a variety of media formats including QuickTime, Flash, 3D, SGV and others through the Viewpoint Media player. It is still not broadly supported though, and only time will tell if it becomes successful.
Because multimedia can be so successful in enhancing the user experience, should developers and publishers begin incorporating multimedia into their websites? It really depends on how it will be used. Early uses of Flash were to present introductory animations that were both uninspiring and pointless, and this quickly came out of fashion. As a guideline, multimedia should always serve a purpose rather than be an end in itself. |
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