On the way to work you stop by a cash machine. At
work you spend a few hours on the Web hunting for
information about your competitor's latest products.
At home, when the work day is done, you pop a meal
into the microwave. Quick quiz: which of these
activities involve computerized interactivity? Quick
answer: unless your microwave is from the dark ages,
they all do.
Interactivity, reduced to its most basic form, is stimulus and response.
Something stimulates you and you respond, or you stimulate something and it
responds. Being interactive is what human beings were designed to do, with each
other, with household pets, or with computers.
Interactivity as a teaching tool can increase retention and engagement in most
subjects. In many cases an interactive presentation of material is far more
effective than the presentation of information in straight text form.
Human interactivity has long been the stuff of ballads, love poems, and
best-selling management books. Although it remains to be seen whether love songs
will be written about touch screens, one thing is certain: computerized
interactivity is quickly becoming a part of everyday life.
It's no wonder, then, that interactivity is making its way onto the Web.
Interactivity is one of the reasons behind the explosive increase in the number
of Internet users. The Internet existed decades before World Wide Web technology
was invented a few short years ago, but it wasn't interactive. It was a
text-only format and you had to know a lot about computers and computer
terminology to use it to its full advantage.
Graphics came to the Web with browsers such as Netscape Navigator, Microsoft
Internet Explorer, and other software technology that made it possible to see
images on the screen in addition to text. Once that happened, it was only a
matter of time before Web pages could literally sing to you and images could
dance across your screen.
Even though these browsers made it a lot easier to get more out of the Web, the
images presented on Web sites were still static. About a year ago, GIF animation
changed all that. It was suddenly possible to make objects on a page jiggle,
move, and dance.
Now just about every jazzy Web site you visit has something pulsating on screen.
As annoying as that might be when you're trying to read the page, GIF animation
also whet the appetite of many a webmaster. They wanted more and better
animation and interactivity and they began looking for tools to help them
satisfy these lively desires.
Enter tools like Macromedia's Shockwave and Sun Microsystem's Java. They made it
possible for webmasters to put multimedia and interactive elements in their Web
sites. While many Web sites are still in the static stage, more and more
interactive sites are popping up. Soon interactive Web sites will be the norm.
There's another aspect related to interactivity of Web technology which spurs
the growth of Web users.That is the human aspect--Internet connected people
making it possible for any number of people to access information while at home
or at the office and to interact online by sending each other email and files.
World Wide Web technology made it easy for people to do all this without having
to memorize long strings of computer commands. This made going online easier and
more enticing because navigation systems could be graphically oriented rather
than text-command oriented.
Adding it all up, interactivity made the Internet a much more user-friendly
environment. And that got a lot of people thinking, writing, emailing, and
surfing. It also got a lot of people thinking about how they could use
interactivity on their company intranets.
At the risk of being hopelessly superficial, let's define an intranet as a
closed-circuit Internet. Unlike the Internet, which is open to anyone with a
computer and a modem, intranets are restricted. To gain entrance, you have to
access the local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN) the intranet is
running on. Even if access to the intranet is possible through the Internet, a
password is usually required to gain access.
Most intranets have been created by businesses to serve as repositories for vast
amounts of proprietary information about a particular company. For example, Sir
Speedy's intranet, dubbed Sir Speedy Net, is a collection of digital files and
corporate information that more than 600 franchises tap into on a regular basis.
Not only is there information about equipment at various locations, franchise
owners can also download a file containing the monthly newsletter or files that
can be used to print marketing materials.
Most intranets are more conservative than Web sites in design, because most are
constructed for purely business-related reasons. However, they don't have to be
dull or static. Interactivity can make intranets better communication tools,
also.
So much for the history lesson. Everybody knows what the Web is like today. What
has that got to do with you and your business? A great deal, it turns out, if
your company needs to persuade, inform, or communicate with anyone else on this
planet.
You can add interactivity to your intranet and Web presentations using various
Web tools such as Shockwave and Kodak's Photo CD. You can also use the same
technology for short, stand-alone presentations for one-on-one or small-group
meetings by opening the file on your computer using your favorite browser.
There are many different software tools to help you create interactive elements.
Here are the names of a few such products.
Macromedia's product roster of interactive software tools includes Shockwave,
Director, Freehand, and xRes. Shockwave is the technology Macromedia created for
viewing multimedia on the Web. Browsers that have the Shockwave plug-in
installed can display Shockwave movies right on the Web or Intranet page.
Use Director for creating multimedia movies and Freehand for creating print,
Web, and intranet static images. Use xRes to prepare images and Shockwave files
for use on your Web or intranet site.
If you buy the Freehand 7 Graphics Studio, you get almost everything you need to
create interactive elements, including animated GIFs. The Studio is a software
suite comprising Freehand, Shockwave, Fontographer (a font creation and editing
tool), Extreme 3D (a 3D authoring tool), and xRes.
If all you need is a tool that can animate GIFs, you can use the GIF
Construction Set by Alchemy Mindworks (http://www.mindwork.shop.com/
alchemy/alchemy.html). With this program, you can combine several GIF images
into a multiple image (animated) GIF file. You can also create animated GIFs in
Photoshop.
If you're looking to create multimedia presentations with a twist, turn to
Apple's QuickTime VR Authoring Tools suite (http://www.apple.com). With this
software, you can create virtual reality movies with 360-degree perspective.
Interactivity won't transform a bad Web or intranet site into an award-winning
one, but it will make some elements of any site more effective. If you want to
catch the attention of a fast-moving Web surfer, adding a snazzy interactive
game to your Web page should slow him or her down long enough to glance at the
page. The best interactive game won't keep anyone's attention for long, if the
site doesn't contain useful content, however. It also won't make a surfer stay
long enough to find what he or she is looking for if the site is poorly
designed.
The same is true for interactivity and intranets, although most intranet users
are more committed to hanging around until they find the information or file
they need. Don't overlook content on intranets, but there's nothing wrong with
making them more appealing by adding a dash of interactive spice.
