Create Interactive Multimedia

Learn to use native browser formats and plug-ins to view and borrow or
create images, sound, video, and scripts to add to your own Web pages.

Multimedia (Review)

The first step in using multimedia on your pages is understanding the various formats. There are a wide variety of multimedia types on the Web.

Playing Multimedia

For each type of multimedia, there are usually a number of common formats. Each format will either be able to be seen automatically with the browser you use, or will require a special plug-in to see it. One way to find out what you are already set up to do is to check your browser. In netscape, if you go to the "help" menu and select "about plugins" you will see a valuable page--print it!

Browse each of the types.

What types of graphics can you display?
What types of sound formats you can play (e.g. snd, wav, au, aiff etc.)?
What types of video can you play (e.g. mpeg)?
What is required to view them?
What types of multimedia does your browser open automatically?
What types of plug-ins are needed and where do they come from?
What is different about Java and Javascript?
Do you need anything special for Java or Javascript?
How are JavaScripts Played?
How are Java applets played?

See Helper Apps Castro pp. 206-207 (alt. p. 218)

Adding Multimedia

Once you know how to find and play multimedia found on the Web, the next step is to figure out how to actually borrow and add it to your own pages.

You know that to include an inline image, enter the following code using syntax for URL just like in links:

Each time you find a type of multimedia you want to use, be sure to check the "source" of the page you borrow it from to see how they displayed it (unless you borrow from a site that is nice enough to tell you straight out :)

Adding most types of multimedia is a variation on this.

Practice finding, borrowing and displaying the types of interactive multimedia on the Web that you are most interested in using. Find a number of examples.

Here are some links to get you started finding examples:

Create Multimedia

There are also generally one or two well known tools available for editing each of the formats (often for free). For example, below are two of the most well known tools for editing and creating annimated GIFs. Download them and try them for yourself!

gifbuilder (mac)

Gif Construction Set (pc)

For more specific information on other forms of multimedia, see the following pages:

See Multimedia Castro Ch. 12 pp. 205-220 (alt. pp. 217-237)