Web Whiz Bang: The Pros and Cons of Adding FLASH to your site

Summary

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Review of hands-on sessions

I Add visual movement or animation to a page

• Animated GIF
• Quicktime and QuickTimeVirtual Reality

II Add audio to a page

• .wav,.aiff - audio file formats designed for PCs and Macs respectively
• RealAudio - a highly compressed, streamed, audio file format
  

III Interaction, Changing the page dynamically

There are two approaches to making a web page interactive:

1. embed interactive objects in an otherwise static page (plug-in, java applet)
   • embed a java applet
   • embed a plug-in file (e.g. Director, QuickTime Virtual Reality, ToolBook, SuperCard)
2. include a program in, or call on a program from, the page (javascript, cgi)
   • call a CGI script from your page
   • include a JavaScript script in your page
     

Web-pages that might have to work on paper too

• real text versus graphic text
• inverse relationship between optimizing graphics for screen and paper
• web page and components (text) have no fixed size versus page has fixed size
• you have to test to see if javascript/plugin/java elements print out usefully, if at all

Main Concerns:

• Is this an appropriate technology for the task?
• Do you have the expertise to create WhizBang pages? cost-effectively?
• Can your server serve your WhizBang pages? Have you permission to do so?
• Is the connection between you and your audience good enough for your WhizBang page?
• Does your audience have computers and browsers capable of running your WhizBang page?
• Must, can and will your audience download a plug-in or helper application to see your WhizBang page?
• Does your page fit in to a larger context properly (printable, other educational media, other web resources)