AS THE GRAPHICAL SIDE of the Internet coin, the Web offers both rich content and sophisticated design. But as we move closer to the second millennium, Web surfers can also expect to see elements that move and talk back.
One of the pioneers of multimedia on the Web is Macromedia, with its Shockwave technology for compressing and playing back Director movies. Shockwave is a plug-in that lets Netscape Navigator 2.0 and Microsoft's Internet Explorer play Director movies. Preparing Director movies for the Web involves processing them with Macromedia's Afterburner application, which compresses them by as much as 50 percent and then creates single, multiplatform files that can be embedded into Web pages. Both the Afterburner application and the Shockwave plug-in are available free from Macromedia's Web site.
So why not use Shockwave to simply repurpose CD-ROM content for distribution over the Web? Well, don't break out the popcorn yet. The prob-lem is, in a word, bandwidth. Downloading a single 640-x-480-pixel RGB graphic that's about 900K in size will try the patience of even those with the highest-speed modems.
True, developers can designate items in Director to preload, so users can view one item as others download. But all but the simplest animations and interactive pieces take a painfully long time to arrive in memory and on-screen.
Web developers can get around this hurdle, however, by thinking about how to enhance standard Web pages by the addition of multimedia elements and by being smart about the elements they choose. For example, a simple Director animation, using several small-sized images of a rotating cog and a sound file of grinding gears, could be used as a button to spice up a Web page.
The latest version of Director boasts several features that make it especially Web-savvy. Support for multiple casts means that Web developers can create a separate cast for each of several languages. Another intriguing feature is the ability to create hybrid titles that combine traditional interactive CD-ROMs with Internet interactivity.
Although it has nothing like Shockwave available yet, rival mFactory plans to make plug-ins for Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer available in the third quarter of this year. mFactory's plug-ins will be similar to Shockwave but with a few interesting twists. According to the company, mTropolis on the Net will support object streaming and fragment loading, which means that objects will selectively download based on users' actions. Even more noteworthy, mTropolis' messaging system will be converted to support TCP/IP, which will allow for collaborative interactivity over the Net. This feature will fuel the development of multiuser interactive games and interactive worlds.
Simple animations, powered by Shockwave-processed Director movies, make this Web site -- currently under development by M/BI for the French band Deep Forest -- come alive.