1995-09-20: Multi-media and graphics in Web pages

Summary of September 20 Web-Walkers meeting (UNC-CH)

Summary of September 20 Web-Walkers meeting

Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 14:23:08 -0400
From: Judy Hallman <hallman@gibbs.oit.unc.edu>
To: web-walkers@unc.edu
Subject: Summary September 20 Web-Walkers meeting 

To Web-Walkers:

Summary of September 20 meeting on multi-media and graphics in Web pages.

Kathy Thomas, Office of Information Technology, presenter

[Thanks to
Elizabeth Evans for help with notes.]

Future meetings

The October and November meetings will be at 3:00 in 209 Manning. It's too
early to schedule a room beyond November.

We discussed possible meeting topics and came up with the following:

October 18: Software and tools for Web servers, including CGI scripts

November 15: Hot Java

December 20: Copyright; Laura Gasaway, Director of Law Library and
Professor of Law, UNC-CH

January 17: Designing for the largest number of users: Elizabeth Evans,
discussion leader

Questions and discussion

Jason Purdy mentioned his resource for cgi scripts at
http://sunsite.unc.edu/purdy

There was some discussion of HTML editors.

Someone asked how Kathy created the UNC-CH Home Page. She described what
she did; says she gets lots of e-mail asking this question; it was
suggested that she add that information to "About the UNC-CH Home Page."

Presentation

Kathy Thomas has a couple of presentations about use of
media in the Web at
http://www.unc.edu/about/provider/media/aaim.html and
http://www.unc.edu/about/provider/media/aaim-pc.html

She started with http://www.unc.edu/~kdt/mm.html and showed a couple of her
favorite web pages that use media; for example, Treasures of the Csars at
http://www.times.st-pete.fl.us/Treasures/Default.html -- in particular
http://www.times.st-pete.fl.us/treasures/TC.2.1.2.html.
And she showed Travels wih Samantha
(http://webtravel.org/samantha/table-of-contents.html), in
which the use of photos draws the viewer to reading the text.

Word (at http://www.word.com/index.html) has some animation.

Superpaint and Photoshop on the Mac or Photoshop and PaintShop-pro on a PC
can be used to produce clip art, which can then be saved as gif files and
incorporated into web documents.

For graphics, .gif files are best for charts and can be used inline. There
is an interlace option, which causes the full gif to be displayed quickly
at low resolution and gradually filled in at higher resolution. If this
option is not used, the gif develops at its highest resolution from the
top down. A non interlaced sample is at
http://www.unc.edu/about/provider/media/noldwell.gif and an interlaced
sample at http://www.unc.edu/about/provider/media/ioldwell.gif.

Interlacing is done with software called Gifconverter on the Mac and
L-view Pro or Paint-Shop Pro on the PC. This shareware is also used to
convert other formats, like pict files or most any other formats to gif
format.

Someone asked if interlacing affects resolution. Kathy answered that it
doesn't, but she has noticed recently that the final pass to complete the
image isn't always made.

jpeg files are also used for graphics. They are not supported on all
browsers, but they do a better jobs than gifs for photos. You can't
interlace jpegs; they are not currently supported inline on all
browsers.

Transparency: Use LD Pro on a PC or Transparency on a Mac to make a color
transparent. Transparency will take one color in the graphic, typically
the background color, and make it transparent so that the browser's
background shows through.

Although audio can be done in .wav, .aaif, and .au files, it is best to
use .au files because most users have the helper app configured to play
that file type.

Audio files are often big and take a lot of time to
download. Macintoshes come with a microphone and recording sound is quite
easy -- using Soundmachine.

Only use video when nothing else will do. Two formats are Quicktime and
MPEG. The file size will vary considerably between the two. Quicktime has
to be "flattened."

You can use Sparkle to create a video.

You can use clip art from CDROM.

Push/pull animation is Netscape only.

At the end of the meeting, Tom Hocking pointed out that NASA has a lot of
good sites -- he links to them from the Morehead Planetarium page at
http://tfnet.ils.unc.edu/~dataman/ast/ast.html.

And we briefly discussed the idea of having a video camera pointed at the
old well. Jason Purdy volunteered to check into what would be required to
do this. This does not appear to be a high priority item.

Attendees:

Deb Aikat, JOMC, daikat@email.unc.edu

Ann Brookhart, Housing, ann_brookhart@unc.edu

Tom Cox, OIT video, coxt@cs.unc.edu

Kathleen Crook, Sheps Center, kathleen_crook@unc.edu

Lynn Eades, HSL, beades@med.unc.edu

Elizabeth A. Evans, Carolina Pop Ctr, evans@unc.edu

Karen Feldman, OIT video, karenf@email.unc.edu

Scott Freeman, ADP, rsf.admin@mhs.unc.edu

Judy Hallman, OIT, judy_hallman@unc.edu

Tom Hocking, Morehead Pltm., starman@unc.edu

Bob Kessler, Chemistry, bob_kessler@unc.edu

Susan Lambert, ADP, stl.admin@mhs.unc.edu

Lynne Neill, ADP, lcn.admin@mhs.unc.edu

Tim Murphy, Dentistry, tmurphy.dentce@mhs.unc.edu

Greg O'Rear, ADP, jgo.systems@mhs.unc.edu

Gary Pattillo, Davis Library, pattillo@email.unc.edu

Jason W. Purdy, student, jason_purdy@unc.edu

Leslie Quattlebaum, Univ. Counseling Ctr., ucc@email.unc.edu

Brenda Roberts, ADP, bnr.admin@mhs.unc.edu

Wendy Robinson, JOMC, robin001@mc.duke.edu

Ranjeev Singh, Journalism, ranjeev_singh@unc.edu

John Stanley, ADP, jrs.admin@mhs.unc.edu

Bob Stepno, JOMC, rbstepno@email.unc.edu

Charles Streeter, Housing, streeter@email.unc.edu

Kathy Thomas, OIT, kathy_thomas@unc.edu

Penny Ward, Research Services, crunchy@email.unc.edu

Rob Withers, Davis Library, rob_withers@unc.edu

  


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1995 Oct 10

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