Multimedia and Web Design (MWD) Skill Area 324: Develop Multimedia Application

Multimedia and Web Design (MWD) Skill Area 324: Develop Multimedia Application

324.3 Use Authoring tools (25hrs) 324.2.1 Identify and Discuss available Authoring tools 324.2.2 Explore various authoring techniques

What is Authoring Tools? Also known as authorware, a program that helps you write hypertext or multimedia applications. Authoring tools usually enable you to create a final application merely by linking together objects, such as a paragraph of text, an illustration, or a song. By defining the objects' relationships to each other, and by sequencing them in an appropriate order, authors (those who use authoring tools) can produce attractive and useful graphics applications. Most authoring systems also support a scripting language for more sophisticated applications.

What is Authoring Tools? (cont) The distinction between authoring tools and programming tools is not clear-cut. Typically, though, authoring tools require less technical knowledge to master and are used exclusively for applications that present a mixture of textual, graphical, and audio data.

Authoring tool applications we 1. Adobe Photoshop 2. Adobe Dreamweaver 3. Adobe Image Ready 4. Adobe Flash have used so far 5. Notepad/Notepad++ 6. Windows Movie Maker 7. Windows Live Movie Maker (newer version of Windows Movie Maker) 8. Free Audio Editor

Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated Adobe Photoshop is released in two editions: Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Photoshop Extended, with the Extended having extra 3D image creation, motion graphics editing, and advanced image analysis features.

Adobe Photoshop (cont).psd (Photoshop Document) is Photoshop's native file format, that stores an image with support for most imaging options available in Photoshop. These include layers with masks, color spaces, ICC profiles, CMYK Mode (used for commercial printing), transparency, text, alpha channels and spot colors, clipping paths, and duotone settings.

Adobe Photoshop (cont) Photoshop is available in the following languages: Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian. The Arabic, Greek, and Hebrew versions are available from Winsoft.

Adobe Dreamweaver Adobe Dreamweaver (formerly Macromedia Dreamweaver) is a proprietary web development application originally created by Macromedia, and is now developed by Adobe Systems, which acquired Macromedia in 2005. Dreamweaver is available for both Mac and Windows operating systems.

Adobe Dreamweaver (cont) Recent versions have incorporated support for web technologies such as CSS, JavaScript, and various server-side scripting languages and frameworks including ASP (ASP JavaScript, ASP VBScript, ASP.NET C#, ASP.NET VB), ColdFusion, Scriptlet, and PHP. Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 is available in the following languages: Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.

Adobe Dreamweaver (cont) Specific features for Arabic and Hebrew languages The older Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 also features a Middle Eastern version that allows typing Arabic, Persian or Hebrew text (written from right to left) within the code view. Whether the text is fully Middle Eastern (written from right to left) or includes both English and Middle Eastern text (written left to right and right to left), it will be displayed properly in the browser.

Adobe Image Ready Adobe ImageReady is a revolutionary new tool, made by Adobe, that incorporates all aspects of image creation for web sites into one program. ImageReady's interface looks nearly identical to Photoshop's, and should appeal to many users who have had experience using Photoshop.

Adobe Image Ready (cont) ImageReady has specialized features such as animated GIF creation, image compression optimization, image slicing and rollover effects, and HTML generation. However images are to be created in Photoshop first. ImageReady includes layer movement and opacity interpolation features that make creating animations quick and painless, as well as allowing you to specify layers inside the source image as links for an image map.

Adobe Image Ready (cont) ImageReady is written in the C++ programming language. It was available for both Windows and Mac OS X platforms from 1998 to 2007, after which it was discontinued. ImageReady has fewer features than Photoshop, being designed for quick editing of web graphics rather than effectsintensive graphics editing for other applications

Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast. More recently, it has been positioned as a tool for "Rich Internet Applications" ("RIAs").

Adobe Flash (cont) Flash manipulates vector and raster graphics to provide animation of text, drawings, and still images. It supports bidirectional streaming of audio and video, and it can capture user input via mouse, keyboard, microphone, and camera. Flash contains an object-oriented language called ActionScript and supports automation via the JavaScript Flash language (JSFL).

Adobe Flash (cont) Flash content may be displayed on various computer systems and devices, using Adobe Flash Player, which is available free of charge for common web browsers, some mobile phones, and a few other electronic devices (using Flash Lite). Flash can enrich users web experience, while others find the extensive use of Flash animation, particularly in advertising, intrusive and annoying.

Adobe Flash (cont) Flash File Format Flash files are in the SWF format, traditionally called "ShockWave Flash" movies, "Flash movies," or "Flash applications. Flash file format usually have a.swf file extension, and may be used in the form of a web page plug-in, strictly "played" in a standalone Flash player or incorporated into a self-executing Projector movie (with the.exe extension in Microsoft Windows).

Adobe Flash (cont) Flash Video files have a.flv file extension and are either used from within.swf files or played through a flv-aware player, such as VLC, or QuickTime and Windows Media Player with external codecs added.

Notepad Notepad is a very basic generic text editor included with Microsoft Windows that enables someone to open and read plain text files. If the file contains special formatting or is not a plain text file, Notepad will not be able to be read its contents.

Notepad++ Notepad++ is a text editor and source code editor for Windows. One advantage of Notepad++ over the built-in Windows text editor, Notepad, is tabbed editing, which allows working with multiple open files. Notepad++ is distributed as free software. The project is hosted on SourceForge.net. To display and edit text and programming language source code files, Notepad++ uses the Scintilla editor component.

Windows Movie Maker Windows Movie Maker is a video creating/editing software application. It contains features such as effects, transitions, titles/credits, audio track, timeline narration, and Auto Movie. New effects and transitions can be made and existing ones can be modified using XML code. Windows Movie Maker is also a basic audio track editing program. It can apply basic effects to audio tracks such as fade in or fade out. The audio tracks can then be exported in the form of a sound file instead of a video file.

Windows Live Movie Maker Windows live movie maker is the latest and a complete rewrite of Windows Movie Maker application. It is intended to replace Windows Movie Maker. Windows Live Movie Maker focuses on the needs of general users. The program also includes a redesigned ribbon interface.

Windows Live Movie Maker Windows Live Movie Maker allows users to publish videos to Windows Live SkyDrive, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr as well as creating HD videos. An additional feature in the 2011 version release is that it enables users to record video clips from a webcam as well as inclusion of new animated video titles.

Free Audio Editor It is the application that allows the recording, editing, batch processing, burning and converting of text to sound of sound. Free Audio Editor can digitize sound recordings of music cassette tapes, vinyl LPs, or videos so they can be recorded onto CD. With the Sound Recorder you can digitize recordings to your computer s hard disk, creating standard digital sound files.

References http://www.webopedia.com/term/a/authoring_tool.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/adobe_dreamweaver http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/adobe_flash http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/adobe_photoshop http://free-audio-editor.com/features/index.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/windows_movie_maker http://www.real-knowledge.com/notepad.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/notepad%2b%2b http://library.thinkquest.org/16728/content/graphics/imageready.h tml