Chapter 1&2

Multimedia Multimedia is any combination of: • Text • Art • Sound Animation • Video Delivered to you by computer or other electronic or digitally manipulated means.

Definitions End user / viewer of a multimedia project—to control what and when the elements are delivered, it is called interactive multimedia. When you provide a structure of linked elements through which the user can navigate, interactive multimedia becomes hypermedia. • A project is linear, starting at the beginning and running through to the end.

Cont When users are given navigational control and can wander through the content at will, multimedia becomes nonlinear.

Where to Use Multimedia Multimedia in Business: Business applications for multimedia include: • Presentations • Training • Marketing • Advertising • Product Demos • Simulations • Databases • Catalogs

Cont Multimedia around the office has also become more commonplace. • Image capture hardware is used for building employee ID and badging databases. • Presentation documents attached to e-mail and video conferencing are widely available. • Laptop computers and high resolution projectors are common place for multimedia presentations on the road

Multimedia in Public Places Hotels Train Stations Shopping Malls • Museums • Libraries • Grocery Stores

Virtual Reality Convergence of technology and creative invention in multimedia is virtual reality, Place you “inside” a lifelike experience. Goggles Helmets Special Gloves

Delivering Multimedia Multimedia requires large amounts of digital memory when stored in an end user’s library. Require large amounts of bandwidth when distributed over wires, glass fiber, or airwaves on a network. The greater the bandwidth, the bigger the pipeline, so more content can be delivered to end users quickly.

Cont. D-ROM, DVD, Flash Drives • CD-ROM (compact disc read-only memory) discs can contain up to 80 minutes of full-screen video, images, or sound. The disc can also contain unique mixes of: – images, sounds, text, video, and animations controlled by an authoring system to provide unlimited user interaction. Multilayered Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) technology increases the capacity and multimedia capability of CDs. – 4.7GB on a single-sided, single-layered disc – 17.08GB of storage on a double-sided, double-layered disc.

Cont CD-ROM and DVD discs are interim memory technologies that will be replaced by new devices such as: – flash drives that do not require moving parts

The Broadband Internet When information providers and content owners determine the worth of their products – information elements will ultimately link up online as distributed resources on a data highway • Actual glass fiber cables that make up much of the physical backbone of the data highway

Our Goal Recognize the importance of word choice Describe the difference between a typeface and a font and list at least three attributes of a font, for example, upper/lowercase, serif/sans serif, PostScript/ TrueType/OpenType

Cont Discuss the importance of text and the ways in which text can be leveraged in multimedia presentations Discuss the presentation of text on Windows and Macintosh platforms Find sources for free and shareware fonts

Cont Define hypermedia, hyper- text, links, anchors, and nodes and be able to dis- cuss both the potential and limitations of hypertext and hyperlinking systems

Overview Importance of text in a multimedia presentation. Understanding fonts and typefaces. Using text elements in a multimedia presentation. Computers and text. Font editing and design tools. Multimedia and hypertext.

The Power of Meaning Its required to use words that have the most precise and powerful meanings to express what you need to say. – GO BACK! is more powerful than Previous – TERRIFIC! may work better than That Answer Was Correct.

Using Text in Multimedia Type terminology Typeface Arial Courier Times Fonts Points Styles Leading Kerning

Fonts and Faces A typeface is a family of graphic characters that includes many type sizes and styles (such as Times, Arial, Helvetica) A font is a collection of characters of a single size and style belonging to a typeface family (such as bold, italic) Font sizes are in points 1 point = 1/72 inch (measured from top to bottom of descenders in capital letter) X-height is the height of the lower case letter x

Review Question? Describe the difference between a typeface and a font and list at least three attributes of a font, for example, upper/lowercase, serif/sans serif, PostScript/TrueType/OpenType  A typeface is a family of graphic characters that usually includes many type sizes and styles. Serif versus sans serif is the simplest way to categorize a typeface.  A font is a collection of characters of a single size and style belonging to a particular typeface family.  Three common font styles are bold, italic, and underline, but there are several others; some, such as superscript, emboss, or strikethrough, have specialized uses

Character Metrics

Leading and Kerning Computers can adjust the line spacing (called leading) leading and the space between pairs of letters, called kerning

Review Question Which of the following is a term that applies to the spacing between characters of text? a. leading b. kerning c. tracking d. points e. dithering

Using Text In Multimedia WYSIWYG - What you see is what you get! Aim for a balance between too much text and too little Make web pages no more than 1 to 2 screenfuls of text Bring the user to the destination with as few actions as possible

Menus For Navigation A Multimedia project or web site should include: content or information navigation tools such as menus, mouse clicks, key presses or touch screen some indication or map of where the user is in the presentation

Buttons for Interaction Buttons are objects that make things happen when they are clicked Use common button shapes and sizes Label them clearly BE SURE THEY WORK!

Fields for Reading Reading from a computer screen is slower than from a book People blink 3-5 times/minute, using a computer and 20-25 times/minute reading a book This reduced eye movement causes fatigue, dryness Try to present only a few paragraphs per page

Portrait vs. Landscape Monitor use wider-than-tall aspect ratios called landscape Most books use taller-than- wide orientation, called portrait Don’t try to shrink a full page onto a monitor portrait landscape

HTML Documents Standard document format on the web is called Hypertext Markup Language ( HTML) Originally designed for text not multimedia - now being redesigned as Dynamic HTML ( DHTML), which uses CSS (Cascading Style sheets) and permits defining text choices. Specify typefaces, sizes colors and properties by “marking up” the text with tags (such as <B>, </B>)

HTML Documents The Font tag is used to specify the font to be displayed (if present) <font face = “Verdana, Arial, Times”> If those fonts are not on the system, the default is used ( see p. 55-57 for common fonts)

Symbols and Icons Symbols act like “visual words” to convey meaning, (called icons) MAC - trash can Windows - hourglass Icons and sound are more easily remembered than words It is useful to label icons for clarity See “smileys” in textbook (p. 61)

Animating Text To grab a viewer’s attention: let text “fly” onto screen rotate or spin text, etc. Use special effects sparingly or they become boring

Computers and Text Mac standard - 72 pixels/ inch PC - VGA - 96 pixels/inch Screen ( 640 pixels across x 480 down, called 640 x480 resolution) Today much higher resolution possible

Fonts “Wars” Apple - Adobe PostScript page description font language describes an image in terms of mathematical constructs (Bezier curves) Can be scaled larger or smaller Currently > 6,000 typefaces available Apple & Microsoft created TrueType

Cont. Complete Guide to Pre-Installed Fonts in Linux, Mac, and Windows

Computers and Text Allow text to be drawn at any size without “jaggies”, by anti-aliasing the edges of the characters

Fonts and Characters Fonts smaller than 12 point are not very legible on a monitor Never assume the fonts installed on your computer are on all computers Stay with TrueType fonts ordinarily ASCII character set - most common Extended Character set - used for HTML UNICODE –supports characters for all known languages

Unicode Developed in 1989 for multilingual text Contains 65,000 characters form all known languages and alphabets Where several languages share a set of symbols, they are grouped into a collection called scripts ( eg. Latin, Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, Tibetan, etc.) Shared symbols are unified into collections called scripts

Unicode Numbers Mathematical symbols Punctuation Arrows, blocks and drawing shapes Technical symbols

Mapping Text Across Platforms Viewing a presentation on either MAC and PC reveals differences Fonts must be mapped from one machine to another If same font doesn’t exist on the other machine, one is substituted ( called font substitution) To avoid this, convert to bitmaps

Representing Languages Some contain different symbols Others represent an entire concept with a single symbol (as in some Asian languages) Translating into another language is called localization

Font Editing and Design Tools Allow you to create your own fonts ResEdit for MAC Fontographer (from Macromedia) caan be used to create Postscript, TrueType and bitmapped fonts for MAC, PB, SUN includes a freehand drawing tool 3D programs, such as COOL 3D and HotTEXT, create special effects See text for descriptions

Font Editing and Design Tools Fontographer (from Macromedia)

Editing and Design Tools

Hypermedia and Hypertext Hyper media provides a structure of links Hypertext words are linked to other elements Hypertext is usually searchable by software robots

Hypermedia and Hypertext Multimedia - combines text, graphics and audio Interactive multimedia - gives user control over what and when content is viewed (non-linear) Hypermedia -provides a structure of linked elements through which user navigates and interacts

Hypermedia Structures Hypermedia elements are called nodes Nodes are connected using links A linked point is called an anchor

Hypermedia Structures Link - connections between conceptual elements (navigation pathways and menus) Node - contains text, graphics sounds Anchor - the reference from one document to another document, image, sound or file on the web Link anchor - where you came from

Hypermedia and Hypertext Doug Englebart - inventor of mouse 1965 Ted Nelson coined the word “hypertext” Computer-based hypertext systems will fundamentally alter the way humans think, approach literature and the expression of ideas Hotlinks - lead user from one reference to another

Using Hypertext Searching for words boolean search using AND, OR, NOT truncation - using only part of word, such as geo might yield result with geology, geography, George, etc. Search engines employ “robots” to visit web pages and create indexes.

Hypertext Tools Building or authoring Reading builder creates links, identifies nodes, generates an index of words Reading both linear and increasingly non-linear Becoming more comfortable with non-linear hypertext systems will change the way we think….