Multimedia uses for web pages:

• Product Catalogs

• Interactive Product Demos

• Video Games

• Interactive Educational Tutorials

• Marketing (Promoting)
  

Domain Name

Server

Service Ports

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) - Developed by Tim Berners-Lee, who later formed The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which now maintains the HTML standard.

Web Server (Hosts your files)

Web Browser (Views your files)

Creating Web pages:

• Text Editors

• WYSIWYG Editors

Javascript- scripting language for a web browser (not to be confused with Java).

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

DHTML mixes HTML with Javascript and CSS to make pages with content that can change dynmaically in the user's browser.

Plugins - Add extra features to a browser.

• Text - Acrobat Reader for PDFs
  

• 3D - Apple Quicktime VR / VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language)
  

• Image viewers (for new formats, such as Vector images in Flash)
  

• Video players (now most video is done in Flash).

• Flash and Director for interactive multimedia content

Object/Embed Tag to insert content that a plugin will play.

Common Gateway Interface (CGI) - Get data from external applications running on your web server.

Design sites so that your target audience will be able to view the site.

• Try to keep your site viewable on a monitor set for 800x600. If you feel your audience has older computers, then try for 640x480.

• If you are designing a website that will be viewed on different kinds of hardware (video game systems, cell phones, iPad, etc.) you can setup the web server to send out a version of the web page optimized for that device (provided you design the page for that device).
  

Optimize your media files so they download quickly. Compress images and reduce the image size.

You should use the default web font, or use some common fonts, Arial, Helvetica, etc. If you use a non standard for, say Webdings, then you are merely suggesting that font to the brower. If the user's computer doesn't have that font installed, then the default font will be used. This may get some odd results. Using CSS you can embed a font, which will help visitors get the font to view your text properly.

Use graphics instead of fonts, if you really need the fonts to appear regardless of fonts installed.

Images on the web:

• GIF - 8 bit (animations and transparency)
  

• JPG - 24 bit
  

• PNG - 24 bit (animation and transparency). For a while browsers didn't support it.
  

• Flash (Vector).

Image Editor:

Photoshop

paint.net

Graphics for links:

• Buttons

• Image Maps

Sound:

• Background sounds

  • Midi

  • Wav

  • Now mostly Flash is used.
    

• Streaming sounds (require plugins)

  • Real

  • Windows Media

  • Quicktime

  • Flash

Animations:

• GIF89a

• Plugins & Players

  • Flash

  • Quicktime

  • Director

Seach Engines to allow visitors to find your content.