Dana Vrajitoru
I310 Multimedia Arts and Technology
Multimedia and the Web
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).