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In building this site and creating web projects for our
clients, we continually investigate new web tools and technologies.
This page contains links for designing and managing web sites, and adding exciting
content such as video, animation, and computer based training (CBT). We will continue to
update this page as we evaluate new new web tools.
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Once you accumulate more than a couple of web pages, managing the design and content of
your site becomes a much more complex task. This site was created using Microsoft
FrontPage98 and updated with FrontPage2000 FrontPage combines both design and management tools. The following links
showcase products that offer total design and management solutions for web site
construction.
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Eventually, we will publish full screen, full motion video programming from our web
sites. With the appropriate bandwidth, we can do this today, but it's very expensive.
Until ISDN and other wide-band technologies become more accessible, Full Motion,
Full Screen Video on the Web will remain an iffy proposition. However, there are
impressive video streaming technologies available today that can
make video more palatable over a 28.8 connection. (Read John Leland's Weaving the Video
Web from Videography Mag.) On the other hand, audio's lesser
resource demands make it a more viable technology for standard Web connections. The
following links highlight tools for preparing video and audio files for the web site, and
programs for playback.
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Graphics add color and style, while animation adds movement to a web
page. But a little goes a long way. Too many complex graphics slow page access to a crawl.
Too many spinning tops can detract from content and irritate users. There are a multitude
of programs for creating web graphics (which need to be saved as either GIF or JPEG
files.) We've listed two we think are the best.
GIF animations load quickly and take up minimal resources. They are an
economical way to add some spice to a page. Programs, like Crystal Impact! Pro, can create animations as AVI
movies which can be converted to QuickTime for smaller file size. Animations can also be
delivered as Java applets, but require more complex programming and can only be viewed
with Java-enabled browsers like Netscape 3.0 or Internet Explorer 3.0 and above.
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The Web has its own Virtual Reality engines that allow objects to be viewed in three
dimensions. With this software, you can create a building walk-through or put a buyer
inside a product. You can also create complex virtual landscapes that viewers can navigate
and explore.
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The type of rich multimedia programming available on CD-ROMs is now coming to the World
Wide Web. Presentation and authoring software is rapidly becoming web-enabled so that
interactive presentations, including video and audio, can be easily ported to html format
for display over the Web. Organizations can now deliver computer based training (CBT)
directly to employee desktops, regardless of computer platform and create sophisticated
sales presentations for their Web Sites.
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