Teach yourself web publishing with html in 14 days pdf

Because embedded objects usually do something-play an animation or a sound or react to user input such as mouse clicks-embedded objects are often referred to as live objects. New Term An embedded object is a media file, document, program, or any other thing that can be played, displayed, executed, or interacted with inline on a Web page. To play embedded objects, you'll need a browser that supports embedded objects, and you'll need software to play those objects.

In some cases, the software may be already supported by the browser itself for example, Java applets , or you may need to download a program called a plug-in to handle that new media file. Using Plug-ins Netscape 2. Prior to using plug-ins, Netscape used the helper application method that all browsers use to play media types that it itself did not support.

Although helper applications go a long way toward allowing the browser to support a wide variety of media while remaining small and fast, there are several problems with helper applications. First of all, helper applications run entirely separately to the browser itself, so the media being played is run in a separate window on a separate part of the screen and, on small screens, the media may be running behind the browser window.

The second problem with helper applications is that because the application is entirely separate from the browser itself, it's difficult to communicate back to the browser. So, for example, if you had a special file format that allowed hypertext links similar to HTML, you could download and run files in that format using a helper application, but when you selected one of those special links, it would be difficult to actually tell the browser to load that link on the behalf of the helper application.

Plug-ins were intended to solve both those problems. Plug-ins are helper applications that are integrated with the browser so that instead of an embedded media file being downloaded and then handed off to the helper, that file is downloaded and played on the Web page inline with the rest of the Web page's contents.

New Term Plug-ins are programs that allow embedded objects to be played or viewed inline as opposed to downloaded and played or viewed externally to the browser. Note Plug-ins are currently supported only in Netscape 2. Netscape 3. In addition, Internet Explorer 3. Other browsers will most likely support plug-ins in the future as well.

Since plug-ins were initially introduced, a number of companies have developed their own plug-ins to support a wide variety of file formats, media types, multimedia, and VRML files.

For the rest of this section I'll provide a survey of some of the more popular plug-ins available. PDF stands for Portable Document Format; it's a way to represent a page with all its layout and fonts intact on multiple platforms. For example, if you write a complex brochure in Quark Express with multiple columns, fonts, colors, and other nifty tidbits, converting it to HTML will lose most of that formatting to say the least.

But, using Acrobat, all you have to do is print it to PDF, and when you view the resulting file, it will look just like it did in its original form. Also, you can create hypertext links within PDF files to move from page to page, index the files, create entities similar to tables of contents, or search them for keywords.

The Adobe Acrobat reader is available for free from Adobe, and it can be installed as a helper application in any browser. Adobe also provides Amber, the plug-in version of the Adobe Acrobat reader, which allows you to view and navigate PDF files inside a Web browser window see Figure Figure Amber is available for Windows all flavors and Macintosh. Shockwave I mentioned Macromedia's Shockwave plug-ins briefly in Chapter 9.

The Shockwave plug-ins are tools that allow various Macromedia media files Authorware, Director, Freehand to be played inline in a Web page. Most of the time, the term Shockwave refers to media presentations created using Macromedia Director.

As I mentioned earlier, Director is the leading tool in the multimedia CD-ROM industry for creating animation and interactive presentations and games. To create Shockwave animation or presentations, you'll need Macromedia Director a commercial product and the AfterBurner tool that converts Director files to Shockwave format and compresses them for faster loading over the net.

Later in this chapter we'll use Shockwave as an example for how to create a small animation on a Web page. RealAudio RealAudio is a special audio format that has been optimized for playing on slow modem connections The RealAudio system also allows audio files to be streamed, that is, to play as they're being downloaded. Most audio or other media files have to be fully downloaded before they can be played.

Both tools provide buttons for controlling the audio file as it's being played starting and stopping, setting volume, and so on , but the plug-in allows those controls to be inserted in their own places on the Web page. To create and distribute Real Audio files on your own Web pages, you'll need tools from Real Audio including a converter to translate common audio file formats into the Real Audio format, and a special server that runs on your Web server and allows the audio to be streamed to the browser.

Multimedia Plug-ins One of the most common uses for plug-ins is for playing various forms of multimedia files inline on Web pages.

Audio, video, animation, all of these things have a wide variety of plug-ins available, including these plug-ins: Note This is only a partial list of available plug-ins. Netscape itself, with its 3. Like Real Audio, it requires a special server.

CoolFusion plays Windows AVI files on Windows 95, but also plays them so that they're streamed-like real audio, they're played as they're being downloaded, rather than having to wait for the whole thing to arrive on the reader's system. MovieStar for Windows 3. Sizzler by Totally Hip plays streaming animation. VRML, often pronounced "vermil" by its proponents, is a language to describe explorable multiuser 3D spaces or worlds contained and distributed over the World Wide Web.

Instead of jumping from page to page by following links, you would wander from room to room on the Web, and encounter and interact with other explorers and objects in those worlds.

I don't have nearly the space in this chapter to discuss VRML; whole books have been written on that topic. If you're using a plug-in, several plug-ins are available, all of which work only on Windows 95 and Windows NT. Creating Pages with Embedded Objects and Plug-ins Interested in including embedded objects on your own pages using plug-ins? Here's how to find out how to do it. There are essentially two major steps: creating the media file and adding a special tag to your Web pages.

Some plug-ins, however, may also require you to configure your server for their new media content-type. Creating the Media To embed an object in a Web page, you need an object to embed. This means actually having the file you want to view or play using a plug-in available to you. For sound and video files, you may already have the tools to create or convert the files into the right format; for some advanced embedded objects such as Acrobat or Shockwave, there are tools you must buy from the manufacturers of that media in order for you to be able to create the media itself.

Each media file differs in how it is created and what you can do with it if it's intended for the Web. See the Web pages for the plug-in maker for information on creating media files. Also, most of these embedded objects have special extensions for special content-types. Although you may have seen many of the extensions before in this book, many others will be new. Make sure you know what extension you're supposed to be using for your media files.

These parameter attributes have the name of the parameter and the value for that parameter. Check with your plug-in manufacturer to see what parameters they support. Getting the Plug-in Software and Testing It The third step is to make sure you have the plug-in software available to play the media type you're embedding.

If you don't already have it, you'll need to download and install the plug-in itself before you can test to see if your embedded objects work. Plug-ins go into your Netscape folder, into a folder named, appropriately, plug-ins in Windows it's called plugins and is in the Program folder. All you need to do is put the plug-in software in that folder, restart Netscape, and you're all set.

Now you should be able to open your HTML files containing the embedded objects, the plug-in will load, and the object will play. Configuring the Server After you're sure everything works on your local disk, it's time to upload it all to your server.

But, depending on what kind of embedded object you use, you may need to do a couple final steps: you may need to configure your server to understand that content-type, and you may need to install special server software.

The former is usually the most common; if you're using a new media type or an old server, or both, you may need to explicitly tell your server about the new media type. Probably the best way to figure out if you need to do this is to actually upload everything to your server and try it.

Most plug-in manufacturers will give you information about what kind of media type they use and the file extensions that go with it. Table Embedded object content types. Sometimes you'll have a configuration file to edit, or a dialog box to modify. Check with your server documentation or Webmaster, and remember to restart your server after you've made the changes. The second thing you might have to do with your server is install special software to support the embedded object.

Real Audio and many forms of streaming video files will require this. See the documentation that comes with that embedded object type to see if you'll need to do this.

That reader has to have a browser that supports plug-ins right now Netscape is the only one, and primarily Netscape for Mac and Windows at that , and for every media type you want to use, they have to download the software to run it.

If readers with the right browser but not the right plug-in come across your page, they'll get an error message and the ability to get information about the plug-in they have to download to view your media. Your page will appear with a broken puzzle-piece icon where the media was supposed to appear see Figure With object embedding, this file would be played with a plug-in that had some sort of controls start, stop, and so on.

One of the more popular uses of plug-ins is for Shockwave animation. Shockwave is the name for a family of plug-ins from Macromedia that allow you to view or play files created by Macromedia Authorware, Macromedia Director, and Macromedia Freehand.

Usually, however, the term shockwave is used to refer to Director animation. In this book, you'll learn why you should be producing a particular effect and when you should use it, as well as how. In addition, this book provides hints, suggestions, and examples of how to structure your overall presentation, not just the words within each page.

This book won't just teach you how to create a Web presentation-it'll teach you how to create a good Web presentation. Also, unlike many other books on this subject, this book doesn't focus on any one computer system. Regardless of whether you're using a pc running Windows, a Macintosh, or some dialect of UNIX or any other computer system , many of the concepts in this book will be valuable to you, and you'll be able to apply them to your Web pages regardless of your platform of choice.

Sound good? Glad you think so. I thought it was a good idea when I wrote it, and I hope you get as much out of this book reading it as I did writing it. That depends: If you've seen what's out on the Web, and you want to contribute your own content, this book is for you.

If you represent a company that wants to create an Internet "presence" and you're not sure where to start, this book is for you. If you're an information developer, such as a technical writer, and you want to learn how the Web can help you present your information online, this book is for you. If you're doing research or polling and you're interested in creating a system that allows people to "register" comments or vote for particular suggestions or items, this book is for you.

If you're just curious about how the Web works, some parts of this book are for you, although you might be able to find what you need on the Web itself. If you've never seen the Web before but you've heard that it's really nifty and want to get set up using it, this book isn't for you.

You'll need a more general book about getting set up and browsing the Web before moving on to actually producing Web documents yourself. You've done Web presentations before with text and images and links. Maybe you've played with a table or two and set up a few simple forms. In this case, you may be able to skim the first half of the book, but the second half should still offer you a lot of helpful information. What This Book Contains This book is intended to be read and absorbed over the course of two weeks although it may take you more or less time depending on how much you can absorb in a day.

On each day you'll read two chapters, which describe one or two concepts related to Web presentation design. Day 4 Images and Backgrounds Today covers everything you ever wanted to know about images, backgrounds, and using color on the Web. Day 5 Multimedia on the Web: Animation, Sound, Video, and Other Files You learn all about adding multimedia capabilities to your Web presentations: using images, sounds, and video to enhance your material.

Day 6 Designing Effective Web Pages You get some hints for creating a well-constructed Web presentation, and you explore some examples of Web presentations to get an idea of what sort of work you can do. Day 8 Going Live on the Web Starting Week 2, you learn how to put your presentation up on the Web, including how to set up a Web server and advertise the work you've done. Day 9 Creating Interactive Pages Today covers adding interactive forms and image maps to your Web page, including the new client-side image map tags.

Day 11 Interactive Examples Today contains nothing but lots of examples-both informational and interactive-for you to look at and explore. Day 12 JavaScript You explore JavaScript, a new language available in Netscape to add new features to and interactivity to your Web pages.

Day 13 Java, Plug-ins, and Embedded Objects Today covers more Netscape enhancements: the use of Java applets inside Web pages, and including other embedded objects through the use of plug-ins. Day 14 Doing More with Your Server You learn lots of new tricks for using your server, including using server-includes, security, and authentication.

Bonus Day Creating Professional Sites And finally, just when you thought you were done, there's a Bonus Day that covers some extra information for testing and maintaining your Web presentation and for managing really large presentations.

Chapters 21 , 22 , 23 , and 24 , all contain material that has been updated, revised, and added to specifically for this book and the HTML Web publishing environment. This book isn't one of them. I'm assuming that if you're reading this book, you already have a working connection to the Internet, that you have a World Wide Web browser such as Netscape, Mosaic, or Lynx available to you, and that you've used it at least a couple of times.

You should also have at least a passing acquaintance with some other portions of the Internet such as electronic mail, Gopher, and Usenet news, because I may refer to them in general terms in this book. Although you won't need to explicitly use them to work through the content in this book, some parts of the Web may refer to these other concepts.

In other words, you need to have used the Web in order to provide content for the Web. If you have this one simple qualification, then read on! Conventions Used in This Book This book uses special typefaces and other graphical elements to highlight different types of information. Special Elements Four types of "boxed" elements present pertinent information that relates to the topic being discussed: Note, Tip, Warning, and New Term.

Each item has a special icon associated with it. Note Notes highlight special details about the current topic.