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Web Authoring Trends and Implications for Collaboration

Web Authoring Trends and Implications for Collaboration. 18 January 2001 ARL Aberdeen Md. Geoffrey Fox Judy Qiu Florida State University CSIT (School of Computational Science and Information Technology) 400 Dirac Science Library Tallahassee Florida 32306-4120 fox@csit.fsu.edu.

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Web Authoring Trends and Implications for Collaboration

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  1. Web Authoring Trends andImplications for Collaboration 18 January 2001 ARL Aberdeen Md. Geoffrey Fox Judy Qiu Florida State University CSIT (School of Computational Science and Information Technology) 400 Dirac Science Library Tallahassee Florida 32306-4120 fox@csit.fsu.edu

  2. Macromedia Flash is Premier Web Authoring Tool? Vector Graphics EnsuresScalableImages

  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)

  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

  5. Macromedia Flash is Premier Web Authoring Tool?

  6. Macromedia Flash is Premier Web Authoring Tool?

  7. Macromedia Flash is Premier Web Authoring Tool?

  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”

  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

  10. Approaches • Simple HTML Editors • WebCT WebMC(FSU) and Blackboardfilling 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

  11. Custom Editing Web Page in Flash Floating, dockable Panels Timeline Symbol Library Window Stage Movie Explorer

  12. Snapshots of a Flash File

  13. Flash is Open Vector Graphics Format Header Tag Tag Tag End Tag ··· • Flash format available at Macromedia Web Site NottinghamUniversity Has Flash toSVG Converter Flash is binarymore efficientthan SVG

  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

  15. Generator File • This is combined with template to produce a Web page

  16. Web page produced by Generator

  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

  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

  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

  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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