Multimedia and the Web

• A popular venue for multimedia projects.
• Many available technologies to integrate html with multimedia content (audio, video, links) and with interactive content.
• What is the Internet?
• Resources needed to access the internet and to view/create content:
• Connection: IUSB - WAN, home - LAN, need an ISP).
• Web browser - some content requires plug-ins.
• Web server - a host for the web content.

Quick History

• 1969 - Arpanet, research network funded by the DoD and rapidly expanding to universities.
• 1983 - the TCP/IP protocol was introduced.
• 1989 - responsibility for the Internet passed from the military to the NSF.
• 1990 - the first hypertext protocols, the first web server, and the first browser, developed at CERN.
• 1994 - the W3 consortium was established with support from the MIT, the INRIA, DARPA, and the European Commission.
• 1994 - the HTML standard invented by Tim Berners-Lee, based on the pre-existing SGML standard.
• 1995 - the responsibility is transferred to independent agencies.

Protocols

• TCP/IP - transmission control protocol / internet protocol
• HTTP - hypertext transfer protocol
• FTP - file transfer protocol
• URL - universal resource locator
• DNS - domain name server
• IP address
• Email - POP (post office protocol), SMTP (simple mail transport protocol)

Client - Server

• Based on where the processing of the information is done.
• Client side: the browser received the raw content and interprets it. The task of the server is to retrieve the content of the file and send it to the client.
• Examples: HTML, XML, JavaScript, ActionScript (Flash)
• Server side: the browser receives already processed information. The server is responsible for transforming the client's request, running some code locally, and sending the result to the client.
• For example, a CGI script will run some code and produce a result in html. The browser receives only the output of the script in html.
• Examples: CGI scripts, PHP, mySQL databases.

Languages and Web Technology

• HTML - Hypertext Markup Language. Formatted text, links, embedded pictures, audio, video, forms.
• XML - eXtensible Markup Language; an extension of HTML to include user-defined tags and create databases.
• JavaScript - Active content, interpreted by the browser.
• Java applets - needs the Java Virtual Machine.
• CGI - common gateway interface. Can be written in any language for which the server has an interpreter (perl, python, even a c++ executable).
• PHP - hypertext preprocessor. Mostly intended for interacting with databases.
• ActionScript - code that require a Flash player. A lot of flexibility for multimedia content (animation).