Ajax for Media: Use Ajax Techniques to Show Movies and Slide Shows

With the advent of widely available broadband, media, movies, images, and sound drive the Web 2.0 revolution. Learn to combine media with technologies such as PHP and Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) to create a compelling experience for your customers.

Herrington, Jack D. IBM (2007). Design>Web Design>Multimedia>Ajax

All the Access Money Can Buy

Just when you think online multimedia will never be truly accessible, someone proves you wrong. In BMW Films, Clark sees a tantalizing glimpse of a better web.

Clark, Joe. List Apart, A (2000). Design>Accessibility>Web Design>Multimedia

Basic Flash Concepts and Terms

Macromedia Flash uses a movie-making metaphor in how they define their concepts and areas of their interface. The basic terms used to describe the animation are the movie, stage and motion.

Kurtus, Ron. School for Champions (2002). Design>Web Design>Multimedia>Flash

The Best of CHI-WEB and SIGIA-L

The chi-web and sig-ia mailing lists are two email based discussion groups on the topics of web usability, design and human computer interaction (the later with a heavier emphasis on information architecture). To subscribe to chi-web, read the info page or to get a better flavor for what happens there, use its full searchable archive. Alternatively, you can join sigia-l from here or view the sigia-l archive . Using the archives for each mailing list, I've compiled a list of the summary postings from useful threads, and a few personally selected favorite postings. Please note: my list below is not an exhaustive list of summary postings. I just picked the ones I found most salient and valuable for reference. Also, these summaries are collections of contributing posts: they are a mixture of opinions and commentary, with some references to reports, usability data, websites or books.

Berkun, Scott. UIWeb. Resources>Mailing Lists>Web Design>Multimedia

Blogs, Podcasts and All That Stuff

I think podcasting is powerful because it gives us the opportunity to reach people in ways we cannot with blogs and websites. Don't get me wrong, blogs and sites have their place. But let's face it, people have information overload! It's often a choice between reading your blog and the 15 other things they need to read. But with podcasts, people tell me that they listen via their iPods while in the gym. They burn them to CD and listen in their car during their commute. They listen on their computer with a headset or speakers.

Morley, Catherine. Creative Latitude (2005). Design>Web Design>Multimedia>Podcasting

Bye, Bye EMBED

Break the chains of EMBED and live free. Elizabeth Casto explains how to embed movies without using invalid markup.

Castro, Elizabeth. List Apart, A (2006). Design>Web Design>Multimedia>XHTML

Comparison of Flash and Director

Only six years ago the web did not support graphics and CD-ROM based games asked users if they had 4Mb of memory on their computer with possible hard drive space of 20Mb to play any games. Today, oh heck, that seems archaic.

David, Matthew. School for Champions (2002). Design>Web Design>Multimedia>Flash

Compromise and Compress  

What to keep and what to cut when making Web movies in Premiere.

Waggoner, Ben. Adobe Magazine (2000). Design>Multimedia>Web Design>Video

The Design and Evaluation of Interactivities in a Digital Library

The US National Science Foundation has established a program to create a National Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology Education Digital Library (NSDL). One of the subsidiary NSDL libraries under development is the National Civil Engineering Educational Resources Library (NCERL). The first phase of NCERL is the creation and collection of digital resources in three areas of civil engineering—geotechnical (soil), rock, and water engineering (GROW). The concept of interactivities guides the design, development, and evaluation efforts of the GROW digital collection. This article describes the salient features of GROW, defines and discusses interactivities as an emerging, integral part of teaching and learning in civil engineering education. Interactivities take place at three distinct levels: the information resource, the collection, and the context. Very simply, the concept of interactivities can be defined as the emphasis on structured representations of interactive multimedia resources. Additionally, resources are designed with rich learning tasks and organized in pedagogical collections supplemented with contextual information. Preliminary evaluation of GROW-NCERL using interactivities is briefly described.

Budhu, Muniram and Anita Coleman. D-Lib Magazine (2002). Design>Web Design>Information Design>Multimedia

Director MX Versus Flash

Director, which hit the scene way back in 1988, was always considered the ultimate multimedia authoring tool. Then the Web came along and Shockwave, a format that translated Director projects for the Web, was born. It was pretty wowie in its day (circa 1995), but the size of Shockwave files, along with the browser plugin users needed to see them, really slowed Shockwave down. Enter Flash's SWF format, which was designed solely for the Web so it was faster and easier to use than Shockwave. And the rest is history: Flash is everywhere, and whipper-snapper Web developers are all, 'Shockwave who?' But Shockwave has its uses. Flash may be better than ever these days, but you can still outgrow it. Say you need better video performance, or you want to create a game or educational tool that uses a joy stick. Or maybe you're looking for the depth of 3D animation. When it comes to interactive projects in the non-Web world (yes, it's true, there is life outside the Web) — such as CD-ROM games, educational materials, reference books, and presentations — sometimes Flash just isn't enough. If you're tackling a big-league, off-Web project, or a particularly intricate website, then perhaps it's time to take another look at Macromedia's Director MX.

Kay, Michael. Webmonkey (2003). Design>Multimedia>Web Design>Flash

Documenting the Design of Rich Internet Applications: A Visual Language for State

Ajax and Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) have revolutionized the way users interact with Web sites. However, documenting the design of any page that uses Ajax is a challenge, because the page--and, more importantly, components on the page--can have different states, depending on how users interact with the page's components.

Cecil, Richard F. UXmatters (2007). Design>Web Design>Multimedia>Ajax

Does Your Website Need Those Bells and Whistles?

Some web designers will try to convince you that your website has to have the latest multimedia technology to be successful. Is it true?

Bennaco (2004). Design>Web Design>Multimedia

Effective Use of Flash in Professional Web Sites

Macromedia Flash is a popular animation application that can produce some striking special effects. In professional web sites, Flash must be used effectively instead of simply for novelty. Business applications of Flash can advertise a product or showcase a skill-set. Educational applications can use Flash to provide multimedia instruction. Entertainment applications of Flash include games and cartoons.

Kurtus, Ron. School for Champions (2002). Design>Web Design>Multimedia>Flash

Experiment in Sound

When you think about sound in regard to the internet, what comes to mind? Dutch design firm LUST explores the sound of the internet with this original project.

AIGA (2005). Design>Web Design>Multimedia>Audio

Fast-Track Your Flash Site

Many Websites that use Flash could be optimized to load much more quickly than they currently do. By breaking up one large .swf into multiple smaller .swf files, you can decrease the time it takes your site to load, while at the same time making the site easier to manage. This article will look at how to break your Website into multiple .swf files, and discuss why it's a good idea.

Angeletti, Mark. Search-This (2004). Design>Web Design>Multimedia>Flash

Five Reasons to Stream

Many organizations are hesitant to deploy streaming media on their sites due to the fact they don’t want to deal with the performance or support issues that may crop up. But those downsides need to be weighed against the true business benefits that accrue from streaming media deployments. In a recent primer, Adobe offered these top five business benefits of streaming media.

Cummings, Joanne. Publish (2004). Design>Web Design>Streaming>Multimedia

Flash: 99% Bad

Although multimedia has its role on the Web, current Flash technology tends to discourage usability for three reasons: it makes bad design more likely, it breaks with the Web's fundamental interaction style, and it consumes resources that would be better spent enhancing a site's core value.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2000). Design>Web Design>Multimedia>Flash

The Flash Aesthetic

Scaling, 2-D style, cycle-free motion, and heavy strokes. They’re not just web design trends any more. Join Olson on a cultural scavenger hunt as he tracks the ways Flash design techniques have crept into other media.

Olson, Ross. List Apart, A (2001). Design>Multimedia>Web Design>Flash

Flash Applications

The reason to use Macromedia Flash is usually to provide a solution or to satisfy the need of the Web site owner. Typically, Flash is used to create a company image through animations and special effects in the splash page or even throughout the site, establish better user understanding through demonstrations and simulated processes, and/or entertain or educate through animated cartoons and games.

Kurtus, Ron. School for Champions (2002). Design>Web Design>Multimedia>Flash

Flash: Create a Preloader

Flash movies stream, so when the Flash movie contains several frames or scenes, the movie should be preloaded so that it will play back smoothly. Let's set up the animation that will play while the main movie (the presentation from a previous lesson) is loading behind the scenes. We'll create a movie clip for the preloader animation.

Berg, Debbie. WebDeb (2002). Design>Web Design>Multimedia>Flash

Flash Embedding Cage Match

'How can you best embed Flash content?' It should be a simple question, but is likely to evoke a lot of different opinions and arguments, as each of the many available embedding techniques have their own pros and cons. In this article, I will look into the complexities and subtleties of embedding Flash content and examine the most popular embedding methods to see how good they really are.

van der Sluis, Bobby. List Apart, A (2007). Design>Web Design>Multimedia>Flash

Flash MX: Clarifying the Concept

The new Flash MX authoring environment and the equally new Flash Player 6 solve a few accessibility problems. Screen reader compatibility is the first Macromedia access milestone. Screen readers—which, by the way, are not called “voice browsers” or “text readers”—are software that reads web pages, and anything else on your computer, out loud. (I’d show you a picture, but apart from a few uninteresting configuration screens, these programs have no overt visible form.)

Clark, Joe. List Apart, A (2002). Design>Multimedia>Web Design>Flash

Flash MX: The Sound Object

Use the Sound Object to control sounds that are stored in the Flash Library as well as load sounds that reside outside the Flash movie. Controlling sounds includes starting and stopping the sound, adjusting the volume or the right and left balance while a sound is playing.

Berg, Debbie. WebDeb (2003). Design>Web Design>Multimedia>Flash