by Gary Welz
Interactive Objects
Interactive objects made using the programming language Java from Sun Microsystems, Shockwave from Macromedia, and ActiveX Controls from Microsoft are having a tremendous impact on Web publishing.Jack Hidary, President and founder of the Java development firm Earthweb, says the company wants to deliver as much functionality as possible, and deliver it "transparently" to the user. This means, for example, that its Java-based chat software updates itself on users' desktops when they go to the chat interface page. All the users see is the chat window--the latest client is distributed fresh on the fly.
Chris Barr of CNET has recently integrated a neat Java applet into a story about local area networks called LAN's Come Home. The applets let users drag and drop the computers and peripherals of a possible home LAN into an image of a house, and the applets create a shopping list with prices.
Rich Zahrabnik, Executive Producer of CNNfn Interactive, uses Java to create a "picture in picture" effect with an applet that launches a secondary browser window providing streaming headlines and market indices. Users can follow the markets and breaking news in the side window while they surf--going back and forth as the streaming info catches their interest.
Shockwave from Macromedia lets you put Director movies on the Web and has become increasingly popular for a wide variety of purposes. Macromedia has recently made it possible to stream audio through Shockwave objects.
Zahrabnik uses Shockwave for a lot "fun stuff" in the Techlab and Grapevine sections: "It's a way to add a multimedia component to the page that's 'psuedo streamed' and doesn't have the problems associated with animated gifs--i.e., their tendency to mess with the client when there's a lot going on."
Hidary speculates that Shockwave may go out of fashion because it lacks the full functionality of a programming language. However, it's good for visuals, and it will mainly be used on the public Internet rather than on corporate Intranets. A major attraction of Shockwave has been the relative ease of authoring Director movies and the popularity of Lingo, its authoring language. Java authoring tools like the Java Developers Workshop and Symantec Café are getting simpler and more popular to use. Still, there are thousands of developers with years of experience authoring in Lingo, the language of Macromedia Director--and they won't easily disappear.
Microsoft's ActiveX is also increasingly popular, and Java is being used to write ActiveX components. Some perceive a competition between Java and ActiveX, but Microsoft and Netscape both are integrating Java and ActiveX capabilities into their browsers and promoting the use of both.
Jim Durkin, Microsoft Product Unit Manager for Networked Multimedia, says that all ActiveX controls being built for Net media are being tested with Netscape Navigator using the Encompass plug-in, which "wraps" the ActiveX plug-in to make it work with Navigator. Microsoft's goal is to make every ActiveX object work in any browser.
These are just a few of the new ways Java, Shockwave, and ActiveX are being used by producers and editors. I'll write about more of them in the weeks to come.
