Multimedia Design

If you would like to create a website with bags of visual impact, then the use of Multimedia website design is the best way to achieve it. Multimedia website design on the internet is the use of video, sound and animation. There are several programs used to achieve this, however the most common programs are Flash, Shockwave, Real Media and Java.

Flash is the most popular and effective of all the multimedia website design programs and comes pre-installed on most browsers and has a user base covering 95% of internet traffic. Each of the multimedia website design programs are explained below:

• Flash: This is easily the most popular multimedia program available today. One of the reasons for this is that Flash is pre-installed on most up-to-date browsers. It therefore accounts for 90% of the market, i.e. 90% of web surfers already have the Flash plug-in installed on their browser, so no download is necessary. Flash is able to compress animations into extremely small files that look very impressive, which is another reason why it is so popular. Flash can be used, instead of HTML, to create an entire website with maximum visual impact, which makes it different to other multimedia website design programs. The latest version of Flash integrates streaming media. However, be aware that there will be search engine optimisation difficulties with a website designed with Flash.
• Shockwave: This was the first multimedia website design program made available to buy, and was brought out by Macromedia, the creators of  Flash. It was adapted from the most popular program used in traditional multimedia, Macromedia Director, a program used by advertising and multimedia agencies to create multimedia presentations and promotional CD's. Macromedia adapted this program for the internet so they could take advantage of an established user base. Shockwave is an excellent multimedia website design program that is simply a modification of an existing program created for different purposes, resulting in larger file sizes and a more complex development environment. This makes Flash a more user-friendly program as it was created solely for web use from scratch.
• Real Media: This program allows video and audio to be played on the internet. Real Media is a superior product as its streaming technology means the file can start playing almost immediately, before the full file has downloaded. It is a better choice than Shockwave for showing presentations that involve video.
• Java: This is the only multimedia technology that doesn't require a plug-in. It is a full cross platform programming language that can be viewed by virtually anybody as most browsers support the Java language. One advantage of Java is that Shockwave files can be saved in Java format, thereby avoiding the need for the Shockwave plug-in. A disadvantage of Java is that it is slow to load.