Interested
in tech talk?
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Interested
in tech talk? |
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| Graphics,
Programming and Other Tech Stuff Once you've set the design for a web site the actual construction begins. This is where you blend your artistic talents with your inner nerd. Freud was the first to talk about the inner nerd. He shortened it to id, but everyone knew what he meant.
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Images are an important complement to your words. They provide the viewer with a visual picture of your message and can often bring that message home in ways that words can't. For the web, graphics must be the smallest size possible. The larger the graphic, the longer it takes to download, and no one likes waiting for downloads. For this reason images are made into gifs or jpegs. These two formats are the most common ways to compress an image for use on the internet. The gif format is best used for drawings and images that have large blocks of colour. 
Gifs are restricted to 256 colours so they are not best for intricately coloured images. Gifs have two advantages over jpegs: they can be transparent, letting the background colour of the page show through and they can be animated to include movement. The jpeg format is the best compression for photographs and images with many colour fields. Unlike gifs, jpegs have access to millions of colours. 
Images with complex colour arrangements where colours blend into each other are best compressed as jpegs. The jpeg format will compress these images smaller than the gif format. So, for photographs and complex colour images use jpeg compression and for images with flat colour fields use gif compression. Other formats such as png and vector graphics are also excellent at compressing images but are not yet widely used on the net.
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Got all that? No... Let's start at the beginning. Once upon a time there was a language called Hyper Text Markup Language. Everyone shortened it's name to html so they could say it while drinking their morning cappuccino, which they also shortened to cap. html has grown up with the internet and has become quite a handful. There are many people trying to keep the kid in line with universal standards and common commands (called tags) so all browsers will display the same page according to the same html coding, but it isn't easy. Browsers do their best to draw html to their way of thinking by promising it new tags that other browsers can't use and all sorts of other goodies. But html, with the help of it's good friends at the W3 Consortium, does it's best to be equal to all the browsers (a small selection of which appears below).
So, while html is a relatively easy language to learn, it's intricacies with respect to compatibility among browsers, and all the different versions of those browsers, and the different versions of html itself, makes coding for the internet quite a challenge. And we love a challenge!
Java was designed to be a real object-oriented computing language that is also cross-platform. That means that any computer can understand and run programs written in Java. Very exciting! There were some concerns: security, slowness and standards amongst browsers were the main ones. But, Java brought the ability to run complex applications through web pages and has remained as an integral part of the internet. For many web sites, JavaScript
is a better choice for interactive programming. JavaScript is a scaled
down approximation of the Java language. It's main attraction for
web sites is that it does not require a download from the server each time
the user interacts with the programming. Hence, the interactions are faster.
JavaScript cannot handle the complexities that Java can but for the most
common web applications JavaScript is the language
of choice.
All along, our friend who got it all started, html, was maturing and adding elements to make itself more interesting. It developed the idea of Cascading Stylesheets. CSS allow the web designer more artistic freedom while actually reducing download time. Wow! With stylesheets margins can be set, glyphs of specialized fonts can be downloaded with the page, words can be layered over images and one page (the stylesheet) can control elements for the entire site. Next, we take all these technical ingredients and shake them into a concept called dynamic html or dhtml. dhtml is pretty much what it says - it allows a web page to change itself after its been downloaded, making the page, well, dynamic. Scripting languages, such as JavaScript, have had access to certain html elements but with dhtml and something called the Document Object Model, the list of elements available to be acted upon opens up. Cascading Stylesheets are included in the properties available to scripting within dhtml. So, dhtml is a concept that includes html, cascading stylesheets, the Document Object Model and scripting languages making almost every page element open to changing on the fly. And this, in turn, gives a whole new meaning of design freedom to web publishers, again without increasing download time. Yes!
Meanwhile, in another part of the world wide web, Multimedia was shocking our senses. Not only could web pages deliver information through words; smooth 3D animations, music and speech audio and video movies were rolling down the connection pipe. This technology activated games, on-line educational presentations, interactive videos and CD-quality audio.
Once the technology improved these sound and image files could be streamed. Streaming is the ability for files to begin playing sound, video and animation immediately while the file continues to download in the background. The catch to using this innovative software is that the viewer must have a player in their browser that supports the format of the audio or visual files. Many of the newest browsers have the more popular plug-ins built into them but the older versions do not. A Plug-in is an outside software product that plugs into the browser and enhances the web experience. The drawback to using plug-ins is that many people do not want to download software from the internet, unzip the file and install it into their browser just to view a web site. Before using such specialized techniques on a web site be sure that your audience will be able to view the final effect.
Which brings us to VRML. Are you ready for a totally immersive experience? Well then, step up to Virtual Reality Modeling Language. From a viewer's point of view VRML adds a third dimension to html. It creates web pages that are like - life! You enter a 3D world where you can bump into objects and they can bump into you -- just when you thought the web was safe. From a publisher's p.o.v. the whole concept of design and implementation maxes out with new production methods and skills. With VRML a team approach is definitely worthwhile due to the expertise required from each aspect of the design: graphics, coding, information design, hardware design and 3D modelling and architecture. Now that's a lot of talent. VRML is like a lot of trend setting techniques for the internet. It is visually stunning only when the viewer has the correct software to enable the technology and a connection that can support such sophisticated web design. VRML is published for a target browser using specific plug-ins that must be configured by the user. This may be a hindrance for your viewers: remember that good web design means that your web pages are accessible by your target audience.
Programming Summary When implementing a design for a web site it is very important to use programming technology that is available to your audience. If you know what computer platform the viewer will be using, which browser with which plug-ins, what connection speed, the selected monitor size and resolution, and the experience level of the viewer - then you can customize your programming for it's maximum effect. And, yes Virginia, the moon is made of gorgonzola.
Most web pages will be viewed on a number of platforms, by any one of the many versions of the many browsers, at varying connections speeds, and by monitors ranging from notebook size to big screen tv size. Your web site must be able to cope with all the variables to carry its message to as many viewers as possible.
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None of the above could be done without the proper hardware and software. Whether you work on a Mac or a PC, you need to have an office system you can count on. Hardware
Minimum basics to develop your ideas: Software 
Not a long list but includes a lot of software: Other
Essentials
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