question about creating multi media web pages - their necessity

[*ProteanThread*]

since a majority of people are still on dial up or at most DSL (though there
*IS* broadband) does it help or hurt one's webpage adding multi media ?
does it necessarily distract from the theme of the webpage ? Are we ready
to move from static webpages to webpages that are more fluid ? Is it cost
that is prohibiting this move ? Cost of what ? ...bandwidth ?
....development ? ...licensing ?

What's the general consensus ? (i'm doing this for an assignment)
--

Woodzy
http://www.rtdos.com
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http://rtdos.com/rtdos (rtdos active developer chat)

http://rtdos.com/chat
Chats scheduled every Thursday @ 7PM MDT and
every Sunday @ 1PM MDT

[C A Upsdell]

"*ProteanThread*" <sy***@rtdos.com> wrote in message
news:f2******************************@news.teranew s.com...

since a majority of people are still on dial up or at most DSL (though there *IS* broadband) does it help or hurt one's webpage adding multi media ?
does it necessarily distract from the theme of the webpage ? Are we ready
to move from static webpages to webpages that are more fluid ? Is it cost
that is prohibiting this move ? Cost of what ? ...bandwidth ?
...development ? ...licensing ?

What's the general consensus ? (i'm doing this for an assignment)

IMO, focus first on what the site needs to make it effective: don't do
multimedia unless needed to make it effective; and if you can drop it for
dial-up users, is it truly needed?

[kaeli]

In article <f2******************************@news.teranews.co m>,
sy***@rtdos.com enlightened us with...

since a majority of people are still on dial up or at most DSL (though there
*IS* broadband) does it help or hurt one's webpage adding multi media ?
That would highly depend on what the content of the page is and the
means of delivering the multimedia content.
A movie preview site would be pretty bad without multimedia downloads. A
game site would be boring without Flash or Applets. Both would also be
used primarily by people with DSL or broadband.
A homepage all done up in Flash is a waste of bandwidth.

If a site doesn't need multimedia, why use it?
does it necessarily distract from the theme of the webpage ?
Necessarily? No. But when I was on dial-up, I sure hated pages all done
up in Flash and didn't visit them often. Having streaming video open
with a click is one thing - forcing multimedia by using embedded Flash
is another.
A site I rather enjoy is almost all Flash, but I enjoy it now that I
have broadband. I would never visit with dial-up.
Are we ready
to move from static webpages to webpages that are more fluid ?
That has very little to do with multimedia. I have dynamic pages that
have nothing to do with multimedia and everything to do with javascript
DHTML and/or server-side dynamic generation.
Is it cost
that is prohibiting this move ? Cost of what ? ...bandwidth ?
...development ? ...licensing ?

What move? People not getting broadband or sites not using multimedia?
The former is cost, certainly. The latter is because not enough people
have broadband to bother. My broadband costs over 3 times what my dial-
up cost and nearly 5 times what the cheapest dial-up costs. If I had to
cut back on household expenses, it would be the first to go. It's not
very high on the average user's priority list.

--
--
~kaeli~
Acupuncture is a jab well done.
http://www.ipwebdesign.net/wildAtHeart
http://www.ipwebdesign.net/kaelisSpace

[*ProteanThread*]

"kaeli" <ti******@NOSPAM.comcast.net> wrote in message
news:MP***********************@nntp.lucent.com...

In article <f2******************************@news.teranews.co m>,
sy***@rtdos.com enlightened us with...

since a majority of people are still on dial up or at most DSL (though there *IS* broadband) does it help or hurt one's webpage adding multi media ?

That would highly depend on what the content of the page is and the
means of delivering the multimedia content.
A movie preview site would be pretty bad without multimedia downloads. A
game site would be boring without Flash or Applets. Both would also be
used primarily by people with DSL or broadband.
A homepage all done up in Flash is a waste of bandwidth.

If a site doesn't need multimedia, why use it?

does it necessarily distract from the theme of the webpage ?

Necessarily? No. But when I was on dial-up, I sure hated pages all done
up in Flash and didn't visit them often. Having streaming video open
with a click is one thing - forcing multimedia by using embedded Flash
is another.
A site I rather enjoy is almost all Flash, but I enjoy it now that I
have broadband. I would never visit with dial-up.

Are we ready
to move from static webpages to webpages that are more fluid ?

That has very little to do with multimedia. I have dynamic pages that
have nothing to do with multimedia and everything to do with javascript
DHTML and/or server-side dynamic generation.

Is it cost
that is prohibiting this move ? Cost of what ? ...bandwidth ?
...development ? ...licensing ?

What move? People not getting broadband or sites not using multimedia?
The former is cost, certainly. The latter is because not enough people
have broadband to bother. My broadband costs over 3 times what my dial-
up cost and nearly 5 times what the cheapest dial-up costs. If I had to
cut back on household expenses, it would be the first to go. It's not
very high on the average user's priority list.

--
--
~kaeli~
Acupuncture is a jab well done.
http://www.ipwebdesign.net/wildAtHeart
http://www.ipwebdesign.net/kaelisSpace

But would you agree that the cost of development tools (from freeware to way
$$$ ware) can be a factor in the quality of the webpage ?

[Mark Tranchant]

*ProteanThread* wrote:

But would you agree that the cost of development tools (from freeware to way
$$$ ware) can be a factor in the quality of the webpage ?

Define "quality". I'd say "can be", not "is". I use vi or Notepad to
hand-code my pages, and they contain higher quality code than pages
botched together in MS-Word, for example.

f-up to c.i.w.a only.

--
Mark.

[Shawn K. Quinn]

*ProteanThread* wrote:

since a majority of people are still on dial up or at most DSL (though
there IS broadband) does it help or hurt one's webpage adding multi media
? does it necessarily distract from the theme of the webpage ?**Are*we
ready to move from static webpages to webpages that are more fluid ?**Is
it*cost that is prohibiting this move ?**Cost*of*what*?**...bandwidth*?
...development ?**...licensing*?

What's the general consensus ?

On the Web, the only common ground that can truly be relied upon is HTML and
HTTP. Everything else, including CSS, Javascript, Java, Flash, and ActiveX,
cannot be relied upon. This goes double if the content is only accessible
with a plugin that will only work on a PC running Windows or an Apple
Macintosh running MacOS.

If you have content that is best presented as video or audio, do that. But,
bear in mind that a movie clip or sound clip is not a Web page (this
especially holds true for Flash movies, to the point that many are misled
into "making a Web site in Flash" when what they really mean by that is
"make a Flash movie and serve it via HTTP so there's some small grain of
truth to calling it a 'web site'").

Note well that WMA/WMV and RealAudio/RealVideo are *not* free formats (and
by this I mean much more than "can be licensed for zero monetary cost").
For the Web, MPEG or similar formats (such as the up-and-coming Ogg Theora
codec) are the only reasonable choice for video.

But to answer your question more directly, what's prohibiting this move is
that most sites don't need video or audio, and there's no reason to have it
if the site doesn't need it. Just because video, audio, Flash, etc. are
there doesn't mean that every site should add it "just to be cool", in fact
quite the opposite.

As an example, the Web site for a sports stadium doesn't need to shove the
"multimedia Web experience" in the face of someone that just wants to find
out what bus route to take to get there. Our local transit authority Web
site, <http://www.hou-metro.harris.tx.us> (though they also registered
<http://www.ridemetro.org> for some strange reason) used to have a Flash
intro. It didn't last but a few months as they realized it was nothing more
than a barrier to getting the information and annoyed the hell out of a lot
of potential riders. Unfortunately they are not the only transit Web site
to make such a blunder.

--
Shawn K. Quinn

[kaeli]

In article <vL********************@bresnan.com>, "*ProteanThread*"
<os65000 at yahoo dot com> enlightened us with...

But would you agree that the cost of development tools (from freeware to way
$$$ ware) can be a factor in the quality of the webpage ?

*A* factor, sure, for *some* sites. Again, depends on what the site was
intended for. I've seen some very well designed, readable, informative
pages without a scrap of multimedia. In fact, they could easily have
been designed with nothing but Notepad and a cheap (or free) image
editor. Those pages, however, didn't *need* multimedia. Their intent was
to inform, not entertain.

There's a LOT more to a quality page than sticking some multimedia on
it. But if multimedia is needed, say for a movie clip site for example,
tools would be needed to make the clips, a decent designer has to design
the pages, the server has to have more bandwidth, and so on. The cost of
the development tools is way less than the cost of the designer, server,
and bandwidth over time.

--
--
~kaeli~
Murphy's Law #2000: If enough data is collected, anything
may be proven by statistical methods.
http://www.ipwebdesign.net/wildAtHeart
http://www.ipwebdesign.net/kaelisSpace

[*ProteanThread*]

"Shawn K. Quinn" <sk*****@xevious.kicks-ass.net> wrote in message
news:08********************@speakeasy.net...

*ProteanThread* wrote:

since a majority of people are still on dial up or at most DSL (though
there IS broadband) does it help or hurt one's webpage adding multi media ? does it necessarily distract from the theme of the webpage ? Are we
ready to move from static webpages to webpages that are more fluid ? Is
it cost that is prohibiting this move ? Cost of what ? ...bandwidth ?
...development ? ...licensing ?

What's the general consensus ?
On the Web, the only common ground that can truly be relied upon is HTML

and HTTP. Everything else, including CSS, Javascript, Java, Flash, and ActiveX, cannot be relied upon. This goes double if the content is only accessible
with a plugin that will only work on a PC running Windows or an Apple
Macintosh running MacOS.

If you have content that is best presented as video or audio, do that. But, bear in mind that a movie clip or sound clip is not a Web page (this
especially holds true for Flash movies, to the point that many are misled
into "making a Web site in Flash" when what they really mean by that is
"make a Flash movie and serve it via HTTP so there's some small grain of
truth to calling it a 'web site'").

Note well that WMA/WMV and RealAudio/RealVideo are *not* free formats (and
by this I mean much more than "can be licensed for zero monetary cost").
For the Web, MPEG or similar formats (such as the up-and-coming Ogg Theora
codec) are the only reasonable choice for video.

But to answer your question more directly, what's prohibiting this move is
that most sites don't need video or audio, and there's no reason to have it if the site doesn't need it. Just because video, audio, Flash, etc. are
there doesn't mean that every site should add it "just to be cool", in fact quite the opposite.

As an example, the Web site for a sports stadium doesn't need to shove the
"multimedia Web experience" in the face of someone that just wants to find
out what bus route to take to get there. Our local transit authority Web
site, <http://www.hou-metro.harris.tx.us> (though they also registered
<http://www.ridemetro.org> for some strange reason) used to have a Flash
intro. It didn't last but a few months as they realized it was nothing more than a barrier to getting the information and annoyed the hell out of a lot of potential riders. Unfortunately they are not the only transit Web site
to make such a blunder.

--
Shawn K. Quinn

So, basically what you are saying (correct me if I am wrong) is that people
simply add mutli media to their webpage because they can and not because
they need to (like your local transit authority) ?

I had a P.E. instructor who once said "IF YOU CAN DO IT THEN DO IT BUT THEN
WHY DO IT IN THE FIRST PLACE?"
--
Woodzy
http://www.rtdos.com
http://rtdos.com/debate (charged political discussion)
http://rtdos.com/forum (rtdos message boards)
http://rtdos.com/rtdos (rtdos active developer chat)

http://rtdos.com/chat
Chats scheduled every Thursday @ 7PM MDT and
every Sunday @ 1PM MDT

[Mark Tranchant]

*ProteanThread* wrote:

So, basically what you are saying (correct me if I am wrong) is that people
simply add mutli media to their webpage because they can and not because
they need to (like your local transit authority) ?

Yep. More often than not it's the wrong decision, too.

*Really* well-done stuff like the Wacom Volito site [1] can make the
experience impressive enough that the average user doesn't notice how
long it's taking to get to the information, but this is rare. More often
than not, the extra development time and money simply impedes people
from getting what they want.

Note that the potential Volito customer will only make one visit to the
site, whereas a bus company site may be regularly visited - and wasted
time adds up quickly!

[1] http://www.my-volito.com/uk/index.html

--
Mark.

[Philipp Lenssen]

Mark Tranchant wrote:

*Really* well-done stuff like the Wacom Volito site [1] can make the
experience impressive enough that the average user doesn't notice how
long it's taking to get to the information, but this is rare. More
often than not, the extra development time and money simply impedes
people from getting what they want.

[1] http://www.my-volito.com/uk/index.html

Sorry, I find that page annoying.
A single image or two with descriptive text, or a video of life usage
to download (embedded as plain link-to-file in HTML), would make the
page more effective (i.e. faster to grasp, to be convinced, and to
finally go and buy).
I have that Volito pen on my desk, by the way, so luckily I don't need
to be convinced. People can go to Froogle.com to find it without even
visiting above URL...

--
Google Blogoscoped
http://blog.outer-court.com

[Shawn K. Quinn]

"*ProteanThread*" <os65000 at yahoo dot com> wrote:

So, basically what you are saying (correct me if I am wrong) is that
people simply add mutli media to their webpage because they can and not
because they need to (like your local transit authority) ?
A lot of site maintainers/creators unfortunately do exactly this. There are
many sites that could be done well as just plain standard HTML 4.0 Strict,
but are assigned to be done by the "duct tape, Javascript, and Flash"
school of Web site construction.
I had a P.E. instructor who once said "IF YOU CAN DO IT THEN DO IT BUT
THEN WHY DO IT IN THE FIRST PLACE?"

Indeed, just because one *can* do something doesn't mean one *should*.

--
Shawn K. Quinn