Simply having a website is notenough if you want to really make an impact in the highly competitive online world.There are many things that must be taken care of. Usability, visibility andunique content are factors which can really help your case. But for reallyimproved impact and interactivity, you should incorporate multimedia elementsin your site.
Multimedia development in a website means the integration of multiple forms of media such mean text, graphics,audio, photo images, animation, full motion video, data, etc. with the website.
There are number of website design toolsand technologies used by web designers for interactive multimedia development.But the most commonly used are Flash, Shockwave, Real Media and Java. With thehelp of these tools, can create dynamic multimedia presentations for your website.
Let's explain these popularmultimedia tools in details:
Flash
Since itsintroduction in 1996, Flash is the most popular way for adding multimediaelements for adding interactivity to web pages. In fact, a whole website can becreated by using Flash. With Flash one can create animation, and other interactivemultimedia components in a web page.
Flash is also usedfor developing rich Internet applications. This widely used multimedia toolcomes pre-installed on most browsers and thus there is no need to download it.The best part about Flash is that one can compress big animation files intoextremely small files that help the site to get downloaded within seconds.Overall a website looks very impressive and outstanding with Flash.
ShockWave
This was the firstmultimedia website design program developed by Macromedia who later ondeveloped Flash on the basis of this program. To view the applications createdby Shockwave in a web browser one need to get the Shockwave plug-in installed.
Initially it was usedby advertising agencies to create multimedia presentations and promotional CD's.However later on with the acquisition of Macromedia, Adobe slowly made somemore changes to the program to make it adaptable for a more diverse user base.Even though Shockwave is an excellent tool, it lacks in usability and capabilitiesas compared to that of Flash.
RealMedia
RealMedia, amultimedia container format created by RealNetworks is typically used inconjunction with RealVideo and RealAudio. It is also used for streaming contentover the Internet. It is this streaming technology that makes RealMediasuperior to other similar products. With the help of streaming technology afile when selected will begin playing instantly before the full file hasdownloaded.
RealMedia is auseful tool for showing video presentations and is often more effective ascompared to Shockwave.
Java
For viewing a multimediadevelopment made in Java, there is no need of any additional plug-in as in thecase of Flash or ShockWave. Originally developed by Sun Microsystems, this fullcross platform programming language is supported by most browsers. This meansany multimedia development done in Java language can be viewed by anyone. Onemajor drawback of Java is that it is slow to load.
Any companyspecializing in usually take help of any of these multimediadevelopment tools for designing any appealing website.