Dr. Website
What You Add Doesn't Have to Subtract From Site
This issue's column addresses some innovative ways to display content by adding video, offering downloadable files or using Netscape's frames tag--and how to overcome the problems that accompany these features.
Dear Dr. Website®: I want to include a 30-second commercial on our Web site, with both audio and video. I'm worried about visitors getting scared off by the size of the movie file. Would an MPEG work best, or would another format be better for reducing the commercial's file size?
Web video files can take a very long time to download and display because they contain an enormous amount of information. MPEG is the most commonly used video format on the Web; QuickTime and AVI are other popular video formats, but they don't offer cross-platform support like MPEG.
All three use a compression technique called "frame differencing," which stores only the data that changes from frame to frame.
If you plan to use computer animation tools that are supported by Netscape's browser via plug-ins, you can serve up inline video that uses proprietary compression methods for even smaller file sizes. Note, however, that they will be viewable only to those using both Netscape and the appropriate video plug-in.
In general, keeping the reins on memory hogging means using a smaller video-capture window, reducing the frame rate or increasing compression.
Dear Dr. Website®: I need to make some business presentation files available on my company's internal Web site for users to download. I applied links to these Adobe Persuasion files, but they're not downloading correctly to the users. How do I fix this?
When a Web server responds to a request for a file in a URL, it returns a type of information--called a MIME type--that specifies what type of data will be returned. MIME types can describe text, graphics and all sorts of other application formats. But if your Web server isn't properly configured with a MIME type that specifies the kind of data in your Persuasion files, it won't know how to handle these specific file formats.
The easiest solution is to serve these files in a common compression format--such as a .zip file--whose MIME type is already recognized by servers. If you still prefer to serve the files themselves, consult with your system administrator on how to configure your server to recognize these additional MIME types.
Dear Dr. Website®: We use Netscape's frames tag on our company's Web site, but we're getting complaints about how difficult it is to navigate back and forth within frames without winding up back at our main page. Is there any way to stabilize the operation of the Back button for use with frames?
As your visitors are discovering, pressing the Back button will return them to the URL of the last entire screen or frameset they viewed, not the URL of the previous frame.
Because navigating within frames may not be very intuitive, you may want to include navigation instructions in a separate frame. For example, you could explicitly tell Macintosh users to click and hold down the mouse within the frame (Windows and Unix users should use the right mouse button) to reveal a pop-up menu with a "Back in Frame" option.
Check out Netscape's Navigating Sites With Frames, which gives more detailed directions as well as advice on bookmarking and printing specific frames.
Please send your site development questions to Dr. Website at drweb@internet.com, or visit the Ask Dr. Website page.
Reprinted from Web Week, Volume 2, Issue 4, April 1996 © internet.com Corporation All rights reserved. Keywords: design video multimedia Date: 19960401
