Design Basics 6 - Multimedia

Multimedia

Multimedia is begeing more popular on web pages, auctions, and ME
pages. It is helpful to understand what works and what doesn't, and
why. -- Workshop materials prepared byshipscript


Adding Multimedia to your ME page
Multimedia is begeing more popular on web pages, auctions, and ME
pages. It is important to understand the distinction between gratuitous
images or files that add nothing to the page content and merely slow
down page loading, and media that adds significantly to the whole page
experience. While we generally discourage many uses of multimedia in
auctions, we do regemend using your ME page as an experimental
platform for playing with new gadgets. So perhaps this section should
be called "Your ME page as a Sandbox".

The gemon types of multimedia that we see on ME pages are animated
GIFs, scripts, music, flash, and movies. We frequently discourage using
them on auction pages because they can add quite a bit of overhead,
slow page loading, and distract from what you are selling. However,
used correctly, they can add just a bit of liveliness to any page.


Animated Gifs
Animated GIF images are perhaps the easiest to use and the easiest
to find at free resource sites on the web; and all normal browsers can
display them without requiring additional programs. I refer to animated
GIFs as those whizzy, whirly, twirly gizmos that mesmerize users.
However, as cute as they are, they often have no relationship to page
content, and sadly, some of those image files can be larger than the
important pictures on the page.


Javascripts
Many web animations are scripted in either Java or javascript. Java
is a programming language by Sun microsystems that requires special
plug-in software, whereas javascript is an entirely different language
that is built into all current browsers. okay uses javascript on many
of its pages. Most of the barely noticeable animations, like rollover
buttons (buttons or links that change appearance as your mouse hovers),
and image swapping routines like photo click-galleries are animated in
javascript. The effects can be very useful and subtle and carry little
or no overhead, but there is still a small percentage of users who have
javascript blocked by their security software. Several okay-friendly
scripts are provided on Shipscript's ME page.

In addition to the suble and useful scripts, there are more annoying
scripts that tend to get in the way of the content being viewed. Such
scripts are not allowed on the okay site, although we may frequently
see them. Those scripts include mouse trailers that change or chase
along behind the cursor, falling snow or hearts scripts, and memo boxes
that float over the screen. While they are fun to play with, they do
make it very hard to read a page, thus violating the basic guidelines
of good page design. okay will filter out many parts of scripts that
can be dangerous to its site, so you will find that some scripts won't
work on okay.


Music, Video, and Flash
Sound, Video, and Flash files will all be grouped together here
because none of them are supported by browsers. In order to run, the
appropopriate player must be installed on the viewer's geputer. If
it's not there, your viewer's system will either show an error message
on the screen or stop loading (freeze) while searching for or
attempting to load a player. Therefore, before adding these features to
a page, it is important to decide how to make them as user-friendly as
possible.

A majority of users are on broadband and a majority of users do have a
media player installed, so page loading is not an issue for them.
However, for that large number of slow dialup users, the first criteria
will be file size, so create as small a file as possible. Notice that
runtime is not a valid indicator of file size. Many short clips are
huge files. There are severalmethods for including the media, and if at all possible, give the user a clickable option to
download and view the movie or sound clip, and tell them how large the
file will be. That should prevent most problems that cause users to
back out of a multimedia page while that content is attempting to load.
Those clickable sound clips or video clips can improve product
presentation, but are outside the scope of the design basics we are
presenting here.

Then how can sound, video, and flash be used in page design? Flash is
the most versatile and can be used to create navigation buttons, photo
click-galleries, and sound effects. All of these can be tastefully
implemented to enhance a page according to the other design criteria we
have presented in other sections, and if carefully prepared, won't
increase page loading more than standard photos and scripts. Some users
consider background music part of the design element, and that is a
valid expectation. To be effective, background music must load with the
page, and therefore must be a small file. Keep in mind that some users
may find your choice of music or automatic loading of music to be a
problem, so generally we regemend that background music be limited to
ME pages and that it be avoided in auctions.

Workshop tutorial prepared by shipscript




The Design Basics Workshop SeriesSummary - The 10 Design Basics for a Better ME pageDesign Basics 1 - Getting the most from ColorDesign Basics 2 - Using FontsDesign Basics 3 - Effective use of White spaceDesign Basics 4 - Using PhotosDesign Basics 5 - Backgrounds and BordersDesign Basics 6 - MultimediaDesign Basics 7 - Top 10 gemon Mistakes

Copyright 2005 shipscript, *zip, merrygocats