1. Web Authoring Trends and Implications for Collaboration
18 January ARL Aberdeen Md.
Geoffrey Fox Judy Qiu
Florida State University
CSIT (School of Computational Science and Information Technology)
400 Dirac Science Library
Tallahassee
Florida
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2. Macromedia Flash is Premier Web Authoring Tool?
Vector Graphics
Ensures Scalable Images
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3. What is Flash?
Macromedia Flash is the Web standard for vector graphics and animation and It can create dazzling effects for web sites.
Over half a million of users world wide.
Vector graphics with bitmaps
Audio
Animation
Interactive Movies
Object-Event model (layers, timeline)
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4. Functions Deliver customized visual content to a client browser
can be large download as media files
Action scripting with JavaScript like language on the client to produce advanced interactive web page (e.g. interactive movies)
Publishing images and movies (which can time sequence of images in Gif, JPEG, PNG, QuickTime etc.)
Fireworks is “low-end” authoring system
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5. Macromedia Flash is Premier Web Authoring Tool?
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6. Macromedia Flash is Premier Web Authoring Tool?
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7. Macromedia Flash is Premier Web Authoring Tool?
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8. Quality Web Pages?
Web-based information can be used for more clients than traditional approaches
e.g. a distance education class could have 300 not 30 students
We can also see more competition as clients (students) can choose between “more vendors”
Thus we can expect need to produce high(er) quality material
Should lead to improved “learning environments”
So there a lot of tools to produce pages with look “good”
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9. Requirements for Training
We need to be able to produce a “lot of pages”
A university class might have 500 pages for a semester
Cannot afford to make each page individually beautiful
Need some sort of flexible framework from which multiple pages can be generated -- like PowerPoint template
Need to be able to edit and support multiple authors
Must preserve “investment so “intellectual content” can be modified (perhaps) and re-used in a later course
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10. Approaches Simple HTML Editors
WebCT WebMC (FSU) and Blackboard filling in of forms to specify one or a few textual components
popular with inexperienced users
ColdFusion and other powerful template based systems
best management properties and good for lots of pages
PowerPoint pretty reasonable
Microsoft Frontpage, NetObjects Fusion
Map to HTML and use tables and filler images to produce better looking pages
Macromedia Dreamweaver with good control of Dynamic HTML
Macromedia and Adobe Graphics Products
Fireworks, Flash, Illustrator, Photoshop
Best for Individual pages
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11. Custom Editing Web Page in Flash
Floating, dockable Panels
Stage
Symbol
Timeline
Library Window
Movie Explorer
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12. Snapshots of a Flash File
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13. Flash is Open Vector Graphics Format
Flash format available at Macromedia Web Site
Nottingham University
Has Flash to SVG Converter
···
Header Tag Tag Tag
End Tag
Flash is binary more efficient than SVG
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14. Designing a Generator Template
Flash Stage Flash text block
Generator Objects Panel Generator Objects (chart, PNG file and ticker) Output Window
Text Variable (within parentheses)
Note {Name} Syntax
for dummy
name to be
replaced
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15. Generator File This is combined with template to produce a Web page
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16. Web page produced by Generator
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17. Flash SVG and Templates
Macromedia shows promise of vector graphics rendering with Flash
Adobe shows possibility of W3C SVG standard for 2D vector graphics
Illustrator (but not GoAlive) has SVG output
Generator is limited but shows possibility of templates for SVG like format
Systems like ColdFusion show power of sophisticated templates
XML and XSL are very powerful
Should be able to get better generator, with more powerful templates and SVG export
should be able to include PowerPoint components as PowerPoint can be mapped to SVG
Also can support scientific visualizations with SVG
SVG good for collaboration as can resize for each client and track pointers and highlighting
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18. Other Standards XHTML SMIL
XHTML is “ordinary” HTML done in XML
SMIL is recent W3C standard for multimedia web pages with in particular
par controls parallel streams
seq defines sequential streams
switch allows selection to support universal access based on line speed and client capabilities
Parallel streams can specify time delays so a full Audio/Video stream can invoke web pages or text chats or … at specific time
Should -- if done right -- support playback of a multi-stream collaborative sessions
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19. Authoring Architectures
We most importantly need to support interoperability of “content” – so faculty/trainer investment protected
Typical delivered page consists of
Actual Content
Links to other content (Next, Previous, More Detail)
“Decoration” – bunch of buttons accessing services such as “chat room”, “class resources”, “send mail to instructor”, WebTop Services (search etc.)
For interoperability, we need to
Preserve Content and links thereto but they will be stored and accessed in different ways in different LMS
Map Services if possible
Service mapping may not be necessary if each LMS has templates and model is that you extract interoperable content and insert into templates constructed separately
Need to extract metadata as this is linked to specific content pages and typically not generated by Authoring System
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20. Authoring and Management Issues II
This architecture is already a little problematical in many systems
E.g. if I import PowerPoint into XYZ LMS and it integrates as a lecture; adds decorations/metadata – can I edit PowerPoint and preserve “decorations/metadata”?
Can I change number of pages in Presentation?
Several Content Models
1) Faculty writes a set of Web Pages
2) Faculty uses an initial template to start Web Pages
3,4) Some sort of Template specifies page layout of metadata, decorations and content. Content is authored elsewhere. LMS stores all this in database or flat (XML) files
3) Actual Content generated by batch process
4) Actual Content generated by dynamic process
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