INTERNET AND MULTIMEDIA

( By mr. Mochoge Cleo)

CLIENT SERVER PROGRAMMING

Introduction
Client/server describes the relationship between two computer programs in which one
program, the client, makes a service request from another program, the server, which
fulfills the request. Although the client/server idea can be used by programs within a
single computer, it is a more important idea in a network. In a network, the client/server
model provides a convenient way to interconnect programs that are distributed efficiently
across different locations. Computer transactions using the client/server model are very
common. For example, to check your bank account from your computer, a client program
in your computer forwards your request to a server program at the bank. That program
may in turn forward the request to its own client program that sends a request to a
database server at another bank computer to retrieve your account balance. The balance
is returned back to the bank data client, which in turn serves it back to the client in your
personal computer, which displays the information for you.

The client/server model has become one of the central ideas of network computing. Most
business applications being written today use the client/server model. So does the
Internet's main program, TCP/IP. In marketing, the term has been used to distinguish
distributed computing by smaller dispersed computers from the "monolithic" centralized
computing of mainframe computers. But this distinction has largely disappeared as
mainframes and their applications have also turned to the client/server model and become
part of network computing.

In the usual client/server model, one server, sometimes called a daemon, is activated and
awaits client requests. Typically, multiple client programs share the services of a
common server program. Both client programs and server programs are often part of a
larger program or application. Relative to the Internet, your Web browser is a client
program that requests services (the sending of Web pages or files) from a Web server
(which technically is called a Hypertext Transport Protocol or HTTP server) in another
computer somewhere on the Internet. Similarly, your computer with TCP/IP installed
allows you to make client requests for files from File Transfer Protocol (FTP) servers in
other computers on the Internet.

Other program relationship models included master/slave, with one program being in
charge of all other programs, and peer-to-peer, with either of two programs able to
initiate a transaction.

1) In information technology, a server is a computer program that provides services to

other computer programs (and their users) in the same or other computers.

2) The computer that a server program runs in is also frequently referred to as a server
(though it may be used for other purposes as well).

3) In the client/server programming model, a server is a program that awaits and fulfills
requests from client programs in the same or other computers. A given application in a

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computer may function as a client with requests for services from other programs and
also as a server of requests from other programs.

Specific to the Web, a Web server is the computer program (housed in a computer) that
serves requested HTML pages or files. A Web client is the requesting program
associated with the user. The Web browser in your computer is a client that requests
HTML files from Web servers.

( By mr. Mochoge Cleo)

THE SURVIVAL PLAN

Client/server survival guide
It will help you survive, but it won’t be easy. Nobody, unfortunately, has that
magic map with all the correct paths. I will share with you my insights, which when
combined with yours-may help you take the least treacherous path.
A survival guide is just more than a map. It contains instructions for how to find
food, build shelter, navigate in strange terrain, and protect yourself from snakes and
scorpions. There are five leading technologies for developing client/server applications:
Ø Database servers
Ø TP monitors
Ø Groupware
Ø Distributed objects
Ø The Web

What is Client/Server?
As the name implies, client and server are separate logical entities that work
together over a network to accomplish a task.

Characteristics
All client/server systems have the following distinguishing characteristics:-
1. Service-Client/server is primarily a relationship between processes running on
separate machines
2. Shared resources-A server can service many clients at the same time and
regulate their access to shared resources.
3. Asymmetrical protocols-There is a many-to-one relationship between clients and
server. Clients always initiate the dialog by requesting a service. Servers are
passively waiting requests from the clients. Note that in some cases a client may
pass a reference to a callback object when it invokes a service. This lets the server
call back the client. So the client becomes a server.
4. Transparency of location-The server is a process that can reside on the same
machine as the client or on a different machine across the network. Client/server
software usually masks the location of the server from the clients by redirecting
the server calls when needed. A program can be a client, a server or both.
5. Mix-and-match-The ideal client/server software is independent of hardware or
operating system software platforms. You should be able to mix-and-match client
and server platforms.
6. Message-based exchange-Clients and servers are loosely coupled systems that
interact through a message-passing mechanism. The message is the delivery
mechanism for the service request and replies.

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 7. Encapsulation of service-The server is a “specialist”. A message tells a server
what service is requested; it is then up to the server to determine how to get the
job done. Servers can be upgraded without affecting the clients as long as the
published message interface is not changed.
8. Scalability-Client/sever systems can be scaled horizontally or vertically.
Horizontal scaling means adding or removing client workstations with only a
slight performance impact. Vertical scaling means either migrating to a larger and
faster server machine or distributing the processing load across multiple servers.
9. Integrity-The server code and server data is centrally managed, which results in
cheaper maintenance and guarding of shared data integrity. At the same time, the
clients remain personal and independent.
The client/server characteristics described above allow intelligence to be easily
distributed across a network.

CLIENTS, SERVERS, AND OPERATING SYSTEMS:

What does a server need from an operating system?
In distributed computing environment, operating systems functions are either base
or extended services. The base services are part of the standard operating system, while
the extended services are add-on modular software components that are layered on top of
the base services. Functionality equivalent extended services are usually provided by
more than one vendor.
Base services
Server programs exhibit a high level of concurrency. Ideally, a separate task will be
assigned to each of the clients the server is designed to concurrently support. Task
management is best done by multitasking operating system. Multitasking is the natural
way to simplify the coding of complex application that can be divided into a collection of
discrete and logically distinct, concurrent tasks.
Servers also require a high level of concurrency within a single program. Server
code will run more efficiently if tasks are allocated to parts of the same program rather
than to separate programs (these tasks are called co-routines or threads).
Server Operating System Requirements:-
1. Task preemption
An operating system with preemptive multitasking must allot fixed timeslots of
execution to each task. Without preemptive multitasking, a task must voluntarily
agree to give up the processor before another task can run.
2. Task priority
An operating system must dispatch tasks based on their priority. This feature
allows servers to differentiate the level of service based on their clients’ priority.
3. Semaphores
An operating system must provide simple synchronization mechanisms for
keeping concurrent tasks from bumping into one another when accessing shared
resources these mechanisms, known as semaphores, are used to synchronize the
actions of independent server tasks and alert them when some significant event
occurs.
4. Interprocess communications (IPC)
An OS must provide the mechanisms that allow independent processes to
exchange and share data.
5. Local/Remote Interprocess communication

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 An OS must allow the transparent redirection of interprocess calls to a remote
process over a network without the application being aware of it. The extension of
the interprocess co
mmunication across the machine boundaries is the key to the development of
application when resources and processes can be easily moved across machines.
6. Threads
These are units of concurrency provided within a program itself. Threads are used
to create event-driven server programs. Each waiting event can be assigned to a
thread that blocks until the event occurs. In the meantime, other threads can use
the CPU’s cycles productively to perform useful work.
7. Intertask protection
The OS must protect tasks from interfering with each other’s resources. A single
task must not be able to bring down the entire system.
8. Multiuser High-performance File System
The file system must support multiple tasks and provide the locks that protect
integrity of the data. Server programs typically work on many files without too
much deterioration in performance.
9. Efficient memory management
The memory system must be efficient to support very large programs and very large data
objects.

10. Dynamically Linked Run-Time Extensions

The OS services should be extendable. The mechanism must be provided to allow
services to grow at run time without recompiling the operating system.

11. Extended services

Extended services provide the advanced system software that exploit the
distributed potential of networks, provide flexible access to shared information,
and make the system easier to manage and maintain.
Extended services include:-
a) Ubiquitous Communications
The Os extensions must provide a rich set of communications protocol
stacks that allow the server to communicate with the greatest number of client
platforms.
b) Network Operating System Extensions
The operating system extensions must provide facilities for extending
the file and print services over the network.
c) Binary Large Objects
Images, video,graphics, intelligent documents, and databases
snapshots are about to test the capabilities of our operating systems, databases,
and networks.
d) Global Directories and Network Yellow Pages
The operating system extension must provide a way for clients to
locate servers and their services on the network using a global directory
service. Network resources must be found by name.
e) Authentication and Authorization Services
The OS extensions must provide a way for clients to prove to the
server that they are who they claim to be. The authorization system
determines if the authenticated client has
the permission to obtain a remote service.
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 f) System Management
The OS extension must provide an integrated network and system
management platform. The system should be managed as a single server
or as multiple servers assigned to domains.
g) Network Time
The OS extensions must provide a mechanism for clients and servers
to synchronize their
clocks. This time must be coordinated with some universal time
authority.
h) Database and Transaction Services
The OS extensions must provide a robust multi-user Database
Management System
(DBMS). The DBMS ideally support SQL for decision support and
server-stored procedures for transactions services.
i) Internet Services
The Internet is a huge growth opportunity for servers e.g. HTTP
daemons, secure sockets layer (SSL), firewalls, Domain Name Service,
HTML-based file systems etc.
j) Object-oriented Services
This is an area where extended services will flourish for a long
time to come. Services are becoming more object-oriented. The OS will
provide object broker services that allow any object to interact with any other
object across the network.

WILL THE REAL CLIENT SERVRER PLEASE STAND UP?

Many systems with very different architectures been called “client/server” system
vendors often use client/server as if the term can only be applied to their specific
packages. For example, file sever vendors swear they first invented the term, and
database server vendors are known in some circles solely as the client/server vendors.

The idea of splitting an application along client/server lines has been used over
the last twelve years to create various forms of networked software solutions. Typically
these solutions are built on top of off-the-shelf middleware software packages.
Middleware is a vague term that covers all the distributed software needed to
support interactions between client/server systems.

Each of these solutions, however, is distinguished by the nature of the service it

provides to its clients, as shown below:-

File Servers
With a file server, the client typically a PC) passes requests for file records over a
network to the file server. This is a very primitive form of data service that necessitates
many message exchanges over the network to find the requested data.
File servers are useful for sharing files across a network. They are indispensable for
creating shared repositories of documents, images, engineering drawings, and other large
data objects.

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 Server
Transactions
Application

DBMS
server

Application

Database Servers
With a database server, the client passes SQL requests as messages to the database
server. The results of each SQL command are returned over the network. The code that
processes the SQL request and the data reside on the same machine. The server uses its
own processing power to find the requested data instead of passing all the records back to
a client and then letting it to find its own data, as was the case for file server.

Server
SQL Calls
Applicatio
n

DBMS
Application server

Transaction Servers
With a transaction server, the client invokes remote procedures (or services) that
reside on the server with SQL database engine. These remote procedures on the server
execute a group of SQL statements.
The network exchange consists of a single request/reply message (as opposed to
single/reply message for each SQL statement in a transaction). The SQL statements either
all succeed or fail as a unit. These grouped SQL statements are called transactions.

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 Server
Transactions
Application

DBMS
server

TP Monitors
Application

Groupware Servers
Groupware addresses the management of semi-structured information such as text,
image, mail, bulletin boards, and the flow of work. These client/server systems place
people in direct contact with other people.
Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange are leading examples of such systems,
although a number of other applications do exist.
Most cases applications are created using a scripting language and a form based
interfaces provided by the vendor. Typically the communication middleware between the
client and the server is vendor-specific. However, many groupware products now use e-
mail as their standard messaging middleware.

Application
Server
Groupware messages

Application
Object Application Servers
With an object server, the client/server is written as a set of communicating objects.
Client objects communicate with server objects using an Object Request Broker (ORB).
The client invokes a method on a remote object. The ORB locates an instance of that
object server class, invokes the requested method, and returns the results to the client
object.

ORB ORB
Application Remote Method
invocation
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 objects

object

Web Application Server

The World Wide Web is the first truly intergalactic client/server application. This new
model of client/server consists of thin, portable, “universal” clients that talk to super fast
servers.

HTML
CGI Server CGI Application
Forms
HTTP
Over
TCP/IP
Internet
Java

HTML Documents

Web Browser
FAT SERVERS OR FAT CLIENTS?
Client/server applications can also be differentiated by how the distributed application
is split between the client and the server.
The fat server model places more functions on the server. The fat client model does
the reverse.
Groupware, transaction, and Web servers are examples of fat servers; database and
file servers are examples of fat clients.

Fat client Fat sever

GUI Application Data

Client Server

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2-TIER VERSUS 3-TIER
High-brow client/server pundits prefer to use terms like 2-tier, 3-tier, and N-tier
client/server architectures instead of fat clients and fat servers. But it’s the same basic
idea.
It’s all about how you split the client/server application into functional units that you
can assign either to the client or to one or more severs. The most typical functional units
are:-
ü The use interface
ü The business logic
ü The shared data
There are many variations of multi-tier architectures depending on how you split the
application and the middleware you use to communicate between tiers.
In the 2-tier client/sever architecture, the application logic is buried either inside the
user interface on the client or within the database on the server (or both). Examples of 2-
tier systems are:-
ü File servers and
ü Database servers with stored procedures

Let's suppose I'm going to write a piece of software that students at a school can use
to find out what their current grade is in all their classes. I structure the program so
that a database of grades resides on the server, and the application resides on the
client (the computer the student is physically interacting with).

When the student wants to know his grades, he manipulates my program (by clicking
buttons, menu options, etc). The program fires off a query to the database, and the
database responds with all the student's grades. Now my application uses all this data
to calculate the student's grade, and displays it for him.

This is an example of a 2-tier architecture. The two tiers are:

1. Data server: the database serves up data based on SQL queries submitted by the
application.
2. Client application: the application on the client computer consumes the data and
presents it in a readable format to the student.

Now, this architecture is fine, if you've got a school with 50 students. But suppose the
school has 10,000 students. Now we've got a problem. Why?

Because every time a student queries the client application, the data server has to
serve up large queries for the client application to manipulate. This is an enormous
drain on network resources.

So what do we do? We create a 3-tier architecture by inserting another program at the

server level. We call this the server application. Now the client application no longer
directly queries the database; it queries the server application, which in turn queries
the data server.

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 What is the advantage to this? Well, now when the student wants to know his final
grade, the following happens:

1. The student asks the client application.

2. The client application asks the server application.
3. The server application queries the data server.
4. The data server serves up a recordset with all the student's grades.
5. The server application does all the calculations to determine the grade.
6. The server application serves up the final grade to the client application.
7. The client application displays the final grade for the student.

It's a much longer process on paper, but in reality it's much faster. Why? Notice step
6. Instead of serving up an entire recordset of grades, which has to be passed over a
network, the server application is serving up a single number, which is a tiny amount
of network traffic in comparison.

There are other advantages to the 3-tier architecture, but that at least gives you a
general idea of how it works.
Incidentally, this website is a 3-tier application. The client application is your web
browser. The server application is the ASP code which queries the database (the third
tier) for the question-and-answer you requested.

GUI & Applications & other

DBMS,
Legacy,

Resource Managers
SQL File
I/O HTTP

Tier 1 Tier 2

In the 3-tier client/server systems, the application logic (process) lives in the middle
tier; it is separated from the data and user interface. Examples of 3-tier client/server
systems are:-
ü TP monitors
ü Object Transaction monitors and
Web application servers.

Resource manager
Application
DBMS
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SQL
RPC,ORBC DATA
MOM ACCESS
HTTP
services
Legacy

Browser/Beans/ActiveX

Tier 2

Tier 1

Tier 3

The benefits of the 3-tier model are as follows:

Scalability: The key 3-tier benefit is improved scalability since the application servers
can be deployed on many machines. Also, the database no longer requires a connection
from every client -- it only requires connections from a smaller number of application
servers. In addition, TP monitors or ORBs can be used to balance loads and dynamically
manage the number of application server(s) available.
Better Re-use: The same logic can be initiated from many clients or applications. If an
object standard like COM/DCOM or CORBA is employed (as discussed in tool
dependence), then the specific language implementation of the middle tier can be made
transparent.
Improved Data Integrity: since all updates go through the middle tier, the middle tier
can ensure that only valid data is allowed to be updated in the database and the risk of a
rogue client application corrupting data is removed.
Improved Security: Security is improved since it can be implemented at multiple levels
(not just the database). Security can be granted on a service-by-service basis. Since the
client does not have direct access to the database, it is more difficult for a client to obtain
unauthorized data. Business logic is generally more secure since it is placed on a more
secure central server.
Reduced Distribution: Changes to business logic only need to be updated on the
application servers and do not have to be distributed to all the clients.
Improved Availability: mission-critical applications can make use of redundant
application servers and redundant database servers. With redundant servers, it is possible
to architect an application so that it can recover from network or server failures.
Hidden Database Structure: since the actual structure of the database is hidden from the
caller, it is possible that many database changes can be made transparently. Therefore, a
service in the middle tier that exchanges information/data with other applications could
retain its original interface while the underlying database structure was enhanced during a
new application release.

INTRODUCTION TO INTERNET

Introduction:

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By the turn of the century, information, including access to the Internet, will be the basis
for personal, economic, and political advancement. The popular name for the Internet is
the information superhighway. Whether you want to find the latest financial news,
browse through library catalogs, exchange information with colleagues, or join in a lively
political debate, the Internet is the tool that will take you beyond telephones, faxes, and
isolated computers to a burgeoning networked information frontier.
The Internet supplements the traditional tools you use to gather information, Data
Graphics, News and correspond with other people. Used skillfully, the Internet shrinks
the world and brings information, expertise, and knowledge on nearly every subject
imaginable straight to your computer.

What is the Internet?

The Internet links are computer networks all over the world so that users can share
resources and communicate with each other. Some computers, have direct access to all
the facilities on the Internet such as the universities. And other computers, eg privately-
owned ones, have indirect links through a commercial service provider, who offers some
or all of the Internet facilities. In order to be connected to Internet, you must go through
service suppliers. Many options are offered with monthly rates. Depending on the option
chosen, access time may vary.

The Internet is what we call a metanetwork, that is, a network of networks that spans the
globe. It's impossible to give an exact count of the number of networks or users that
comprise the Internet, but it is easily in the thousands and millions respectively. The
Internet employs a set of standardized protocols which allow for the sharing of resources
among different kinds of computers that communicate with each other on the network.
These standards, sometimes referred to as the Internet Protocol Suite, are the rules that
developers adhere to when creating new functions for the Internet.
The Internet is also what we call a distributed system; there is no central archives.
Technically, no one runs the Internet. Rather, the Internet is made up of thousands of
smaller networks. The Internet thrives and develops as its many users find new ways to
create, display and retrieve the information that constitutes the Internet.
History & Development of the Internet:
In its infancy, the Internet was originally conceived by the Department of Defense as a
way to protect government communications systems in the event of a military strike. The
original network, dubbed ARPANet (for the Advanced Research Projects Agency that
developed it) evolved into a communications channel among contractors, military
personnel, and university researchers who were contributing to ARPA projects.
The network employed a set of standard protocols to create an effective way for these
people to communicate and share data with each other.
ARPAnet's popularity continued to spread among researchers, and in the1980's the
National Science Foundation, whose NSFNet, linked several high speed computers, took
charge of the what had come to be known as the Internet.

By the late 1980's, thousands of cooperating networks were participating in the Internet.
In 1991, the U.S. High Performance Computing Act established the NREN (National
Research & Education Network). NREN's goal was to develop and maintain high-speed
networks for research and education, and to investigate commercial uses for the Internet.

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The rest, as they say, is history in the making. The Internet has been improved through
the developments of such services as Gopher and the World Wide Web.
Even though the Internet is predominantly thought of as a research oriented network, it
continues to grow as an informational, creative, and commercial resource every day and
all over the world.

Who Pays for the Internet?

There is no clear answer to this question because the Internet is not one "thing", it's many
things. No one central agency exists that charges individual Internet users. Rather,
individuals and institutions who use the Internet pay a local or regional Internet service
provider for their share of services. And in turn, those smaller Internet service providers
might purchase services from an even larger network. So basically, everyone who uses
the Internet in some way pays for part of it.

2-what makes the internet work?

The unique thing about the Internet is that it allows many different computers to connect
and talk to each other. This is possible because of a set of standards, known as protocols,
that govern the transmission of data over the network: TCP/IP (Transmission Control
Protocol/Internet Protocol). Most people who use the Internet aren't so interested in
details related to these protocols. They do, however, want to know what they can do on
the Internet and how to do it effectively.

The Client/Server Model:

The most popular Internet tools operate as client/server systems. You're running a
program called a Web client. This piece of software displays documents for you and
carries out your requests. If it becomes necessary to connect to another type of service--
say, to set up a Telnet session, or to download a file--your Web client will take care of
this, too. Your Web client connects (or "talks") to a Web server to ask for information on
your behalf.

The Web server is a computer running another type of Web software which provides
data, or "serves up" an information resource to your Web client.

All of the basic Internet tools--including Telnet, FTP, Gopher, and the World Wide Web-
-are based upon the cooperation of a client and one or more servers. In each case, you
interact with the client program and it manages the details of how data is presented to you
or the way in which you can look for resources. In turn, the client interacts with one or
more servers where the information resides. The server receives a request, processes it,
and sends a result, without having to know the details of your computer system, because
the client software on your computer system is handling those details.
The advantage of the client/server model lies in distributing the work so that each tool
can focus or specialize on particular tasks: the server serves information to many users
while the client software for each user handles the individual user's interface and other
details of the requests and results.

The Use of Local Clients:

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Every computer should be equipped with basic client software packages that allow you to
perform functions such as electronic mail, Telnet, Gopher, and FTP.

Internet and World Wide Web

Internet is the world’s largest computer network, the network of networks, scattered all
over the world.

A network of networks, or “Internet”, is a group of two or more networks that are:

§ Interconnected physically
§ Capable of communicating and sharing data with each other
§ Able to act together as a single network
Machines on one network can communicate with machines on the other networks, and
send data, files, and other information back and forth.
For this work, the networks and machines that are part of the Internet have to agree either
to speak the same “language” or use an “interpreter”. This “language” is software that
enables the different types of machines on separate networks to communicate and
exchange information.
To be used by different types of machines and yet be understood by all of them, the
software must follow a set of rules or protocol. The Internet, with a capital “I”, is the
networks of networks, which either uses the TCP/IP protocol or interacts with TCP/IP
networks via gateways (the interpreters). The Internet presents these networks as one
seamless network for its users.
The Internet covers the globe and includes large, international networks as well as many
smaller, local-area networks (LANs).
The Internet offers access to data, graphics, sound, software, text, and people through a
variety of services and tools for communication and data exchange:-
§ Remote login (Telnet)
§ File transfer protocol (FTP)
§ Electronic mail (e-mail
§ News (USENET or network news)
§ Hypertext (WWW)

WHAT’S SPECIAL ABOUT INTERNET

There are three obvious reasons. Internet is the cheapest and fastest means to:
§ Get information
§ Provide information
§ Compile information

Getting Information on the Internet

The amount of information available through the Internet is staggering. To make all of it
more easily available to users, programs such as the gopher were developed to help
present material in some logical fashion. The most recent and very successful attempt at
presenting information over the Internet is the World Wide Web (WWW). You could get
( By mr. Mochoge Cleo)
the information about people, products, organizations, research data, electronic versions
of printed media etc. from the Internet.
Providing Information on the Internet
Most of what you want to provide could be considered as advertising. While that may
sound somewhat commercial, it is the best and the most inexpensive way to let people

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know what you are doing, who you are/ have done, and how. In addition to advertising,
the other critical functions that relate to provision of information are:-
Publishing-including full text articles, reports, illustrated articles, abstracts, computer
programs, and demonstrations.
Extensions-in which some of the delays associated with the printed media, may be
reduced.
The possibilities here include both distance learning and assistance for students.

Compiling Information from Internet

This is obviously a special case of “getting” information. The distinction is that it is
possible to get specialized information from the web. e.g. If you wanted to poll the
readership of a magazine or conduct a survey to detect the pulse of a selected community,
the web provides you with the ideal platform and opportunity. Using forms, e-mail, etc,
you can conduct surveys; get opinion of the people across the world.

INTERNET ACCESS
You connect to internet in one of the two basic ways, dialing into an Internet Service
Provider (ISP) computer, or with a direct connection to an Internet Service Provider. The
difference is mainly in the speed and cost. In most cases you connect to your ISP using a
telephone line and modem. This type of connection is called the Dialup connection.

Dial-up Connection
With a dial-up account, you use your modem to convert computer bits and bytes into
modulated (tonal) signals that the phone line can transmit. These signals are received by a
modem at your ISP and demodulated into bits and bytes for their computer. Dial-up
access is either by way of SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol) or PPP (Point to point
protocol).
To establish a conventional dial-up connection to the Internet, you will need the
following:
ü An account with an Internet Access Provider (In India BSNL, Satyam Online,
etc). the account can be either TCP/IP or Shell.
ü A telephone connection
ü A computer with serial port (for External modems) or an expansion slot (for
Internal modems)
ü A modem (External/Internal)
ü A communication (or terminal emulation) software SLIP/PPP (TCP/IP) account
holders will require a browser software (Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator,
etc) and an e-mail software (Microsoft Internet Mail, Netscape Messenger,
Eudora etc) for Shell account holders the browser software (Lynx) and the E-mail
software (Pine) are usually available with Internet Access.

( By mr. Mochoge Cleo)

Direct Connection
You can also get a direct connection to your ISP, where you have a fixed cable or a
dedicated phone line to the ISP. Often the dedicated line is an ISDN (Integrated Services
Digital Network) line which is higher-speed version of the standard phone line that
requires two phone lines.
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You can also get a dedicated line called a T-1 or T-3. A T-1 (Tee-one) line can handle
1280 kilobytes per second. A T-3 line can handle ten times that speed.

How Do I Connect to the Internet?

• Computer

• Connection –

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Internet Basics
For most people who are new to the Internet, the first experience is quite overwhelming.
However as one gets the feel of the Internet, it becomes clear that Internet is similar to
any medium of information and or/ communication.
Once you know how to send and receive electronic mail, subscribe to mailing lists, join
and participate in discussion groups and Internet chats, your power to communicate with
people anywhere in the world increases dramatically.

What Should I Do?

Before you can decide how you want to use the Internet, you should get an idea about
what all you can do and what is there in the cyber space. For beginners, use one of the
powerful web browsers like Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator.
( By mr. Mochoge Cleo)

Web browsers are mainly used to access pages of the World Wide Web.
By clicking on the hypertext links on a page it is possible to jump from one Internet site
to another, regardless of its location. Hypertext links are usually highlighted or different
colored text, images or icons.
Given below is a list of activities that you could do with a web browser:-
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 Ø Visit Web sites
Ø Send and receive electronic mail
Ø Read and post articles in newsgroups
Ø Download files to your PC.
Ø Chat with other users on-line
Ø Play games with others on-line
Ø Access on-line multimedia including radio and video broadcasts
Ø Search the Internet for Information
Ø Subscribe to electronic newsletters, e-zines etc.
Ø Do on-line shopping
Ø Post your resumes on the Internet
Ø Create your own web sites
Ø Create an e-mail ID and account for you
Ø Find a person’s details
Ø Send flowers or gifts to others

INTERNET PROTOCOLS
v The most commonly used protocols are:-
v Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)
v File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
v Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
v Telnet
v Gopher
v Wide Area Information Service (WAIS)

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol

TCP/IP is actually a collection of protocols or rules, that govern the way data travels
from one machine to another across networks.

IP-The IP does the following:

• Envelopes addresses the data
• Enables the network to read the envelope and forward the data to its
destination.
• Defines how much data can fit in a single “envelope” (a packet).

TCP- The TCP component does the following:

• Breaks data up into packets that the network can handle efficiently.
• Verifies whether all the packets have arrived at their destination.
• Reassembles the data.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, and is part of the TCP/IP protocol suit. It is the
protocol, or set of ruled, which enables the files to be transferred between computers.
FTP works on the client/server principle. The basic steps to use FTP are:-
( By mr. Mochoge Cleo)

§ Connect to the FTP server

§ Navigate the file structure to find the file you want
§ Transfer the file.

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The specifics of each step will vary depending on the client program being used and the
type of Internet connection. There are a wide variety of files that are publicly available
through anonymous FTP.
Shareware-software that you can use for free for a trial period but then pay a fee for
Freeware-completely free software, for example fonts, clipart and games.
Upgrades & Patches-upgrades to current software and “fixes” for software problems.
Documents-examples include research papers, articles and Internet documentation.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)

HTTP is short for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. It is a set of rules, or protocol, that
governs the transfer of hypertext between two or more computers.
Hypetext is text that is specifically coded using a standard system called Hypertext
Markup Language (HTML). The HTML codes are used to create links.
HTTP is based on the client/server principle. HTTP allows a “computer A” to establish a
connection with a “computer B” (the server) and make a request.

HYPERTEXT
In a hypertext document, certain words within the text are marked as links to other areas
of the current document or to other documents
The user moves to a related area by moving his or her mouse pointer to the link and
clicking once with the mouse button
Links are used to point to another part of the same document, in which case clicking the
link will cause the browser to move to a new part of the currently displayed document

Telnet
Telnet is a protocol, or set of rules that enables one computer to connect to another
computer. This process is also referred to s remote login
The user’s computer, which initiates the connection, is referred to as the local computer,
and the machine being connected to, which accepts the connection, is referred to as the
remote, or host computer.

Telnet is the protocol used to establish a login session on a remote computer on the
network. While many computers on the Internet require users to have authorization,
others are open to the public and can be logged onto with telnet. Telnet is not a method to
transfer files from one machine to another, but rather is a way to remotely connect to
another system with privileges to run specific programs on that system. Some uses of the
Telnet protocol include:
connecting to a library catalog to search that library's collection connecting to a location
that allows public priveleges to search its campus information system connecting to a
location that gives you an up-to-the minute weather report

( By mr. Mochoge Cleo)

Basic Telnet Commands

open - establishes a connection to the specified host.

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close - closes an open connection and leaves you in the telnet software quit - closes any
open telnet sessions and exits the telnet software. When using a telnet program like
NCSA Telnet, you invoke these commands by way of pull-down menus or command
keys.

Gopher
Gopher is a protocol that is designed to search, retrieve, and display documents from
remote sites on the Internet.
It is also possible to initiate on-line connections with other systems via Gopher.
Information accessible via Gopher is stored on many computers all over the Internet.
These computers are called Gopher servers.
Users interact with Gopher via a hierarchy of menus and can use full-text searching
capabilities of Gopher to identify desired documents.
Gopher can work with the following internet tools or systems:-
§ Search local WAIS idiocies; query remote WAIS servers and funnel the results to
Gopher clients.
§ Query remote FTP sites and funnel the results to Gopher clients
§ Be queried by WWW clients either using native HTTP querying.

Gopher is a client/server system that allows you to access many Internet resources simply
by making selections from a sequence of menus. Each time you make a selection, Gopher
carries out your request to the computer that contains the information and "serves" it up.
For example, if you select a menu item that represents a text file, Gopher will get that
file--wherever it happens to be--and display it for you. As you use Gopher, some menu
items lead to other menus. If you choose one of these, Gopher will retrieve the new menu
and display it for you. Thus you can move from menu to menu, using only a few key
strokes or a mouse to navigate. The power of Gopher is that the resources listed in a
menu may be anywhere on the Internet. As Gopher connects to computers to comply with
your menu selection, you don't need to be preoccupied with the behind-the-scenes work
of connecting to and disconnecting from these various computers. Gopher does this for
you without your even needing to be aware of it. This automatic connecting makes
Gopher popular and useful.

Where did Gopher come from?

"Born" in April 1991, gopher began as a project at the Microcomputer, Workstation, and
Networks Center at the University of Minnesota to help people on campus get answers to
computer-related questions. At the time, the computer center staff had accumulated
answers to thousands of questions regarding computers and software.

What was needed was an easy and efficient way to deliver this information to students,
faculty and staff. Thus, the creation of Gopher reaffirms the adage that necessity is the
mother of invention.

Why is it called Gopher?

The name "Gopher" is appropriate for three reasons:

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 1. Just as a real gopher successfully navigates beneath the prairie, the Internet
Gopher tunnels
through the invisible paths of the Internet to help you find the information
you want.

2. The name refers to someone who fetches things or provides service for other
people.
3. The Golden Gopher is the mascot of the University of Minnesota.

INTERNET ADDRESSING
In general, Internet addressing is a systematic way to identify people, computers and
Internet resources.

IP Address
If you want to connect to another computer, transfer files to or from another computer, or
send an e-mail message, you first need to know where the other computer is-you need the
computer’s “address”.
An IP (Internet Protocol) address is an identifier for a particular machine on a particular
network e.g 202.54.1.6
The IP addresses have the following characteristics in common:-
• IP addresses are unique
• No two machines can have the same IP number.
• IP addresses are also global and standardized
• All machines connected to the Internet agree to use the same scheme for
establishing an address.

Domain Name
A domain name is a way to identify and locate computers connected to the internet. No
two organizations can have the same domain name e.g Microsoft.com, ibm.com,
nasa.gov etc.
The major categories for top-level domain names are:-
com-commercial entities
edu-educational institutions
net-organisations directly involved on Internet operations
org-miscellaneous organizatons that don’t don’t fit any other category, such as non-profit
groups
gov-united states Federal Government entities
mil-United states military

Introduction to the World Wide Web

The World Wide Web (also referred to as WWW or W3) is the fastest growing area of
the Internet. While gopher was an important step in allowing users to "browse" through
the Internet's vast resources, the World Wide Web has raised excitement about the
Internet to new heights.
What makes the World Wide Web appealing and innovative is its use of hypertext as a
way of linking documents to each other. A highlighted word or phrase in one document
acts as a pointer to another document that amplifies or relates to the first document. When
looking at a WWW document, the reader doesn't have to follow every pointer, or link
(also called a hypertext link), only those that look interesting or useful. In this way, the
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user tailors the experience to suit his or her needs or interests. The other very appealing
aspect of the World Wide Web is the use of graphics and sound capabilities. Documents
on the WWW include text, but they may also include still images, video, and audio for a
very exciting presentation. People who create WWW documents often include a
photograph of themselves along with detailed professional information and personal
interests. (This is often called a person's home page.)

What makes the WWW work?

WWW is another example of client/server computing. Each time a link is followed, the
client is requesting a document (or graphic or sound file) from a server (also called a Web
server) that's part of the World Wide Web that "serves" up the document. The server uses
a protocol called HTTP or HyperText Transport Protocol. The standard for creating
hypertext documents for the WWW is HyperText Markup Language or HTML. HTML
essentially codes plain text documents so they can be viewed on the Web.
Uniform Resource Locator(URL)
A URL identifies a particular Internet resource; for example a Web Page, a Gopher
server, a library catalog, an image, or a text file. URLs represent a standardized
addressing scheme for Internet resources, and help the users to locate these resources by
indicating exactly where they are. Every resource via the World Wide Web has a unique

URL.
URLs consists of letters, numbers, and punctuation. The basic structure of a URL is
hierarchical, and the hierarchy moves from left to right:

Protocol://server-name.domain-name.top-level-domain:port/directory/filename

A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) (pronounced "you-are-EL" or, in some quarters,

"earl") is the address of a file or other resource accessible on the Internet

• URL structure
protocol://host.domain[:port]/path/file.extension [?optional stuff]
http://www.hellohelpme.com/index.html

http: protocol
//www. host
hellohelpme.com domain
/index.html the individual document

the extension html shows that it was coded with html (web documents frequently have
the extension html or htm)
• Protocol might be - http, file, gopher, wais, news, telnet, https, ....
• The CASE of URLs may be important! Use only lower case in URLs that you
build!

"optional stuff" - after a ? - is usually search parameters or values for variables. Often
used to pass parameters

Example includes:
http://www.lnl.net/alexis/index.html
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gopher://gopher.state.edu

WEB BROWSERS
A browser is a piece of software that acts as an interface between the user and the inner
workings of the Internet, specifically the World Wide Web. Browsers are also referred as
web clients, or Universal clients because in the client/server model, the browser functions
as the client program.
The browser acts on behalf of the user. The browser:
§ Contacts a web server and sends a request for information.
§ Receives the information and then displays it on the user’s computer.
A browser can be graphical or text-based and can make the Internet easier to use and
more intuitive. A text-based shows the user only the textual matter. A graphical browser
allows the user to see more of what the WWW has to offer such as graphics, photographs
and multimedia.
A browser program enables your computer to extract information from remote computers
working on any platform through the WWW. The program on your computer is called
WWW client. The WWW program [usually] on another computer that the browser
"talks" to is called the server
Technically, a Web browser is a client program that uses the Hypertext Transport Control
Protocol (HTTP) to make requests of Web servers throughout the Internet on behalf of
the browser user
Examples of the browsers

Ø Microsoft Internet Explorer

Ø Netscape Navigator

WEB BROWSING
Internet browsing or ‘net surfing’, as it is often called, is the process of visiting different
web sites on the Internet hosted by various companies, organizations, educational
institutions, magazines, individuals, etc. the Internet contains a wealth of information that
can help your business. Armed with a good Internet browser, you can easily get around to
a myriad of sites, gathering competitive information, conducting market research, reading
publications, and staying in touch with what’s happening at your business associations.

Chatting:
Internet Relay Chat (IRC), the other method for Internet conversation, is less common
than talk because someone must set up the Chat before others can join in. Chat sessions
allow many users to join in the same free-form conversation, usually centered around a
discussion topic. When users see a topic that interests them, they type a command to
join and then type another command to choose a nickname. Nicknames allow people in
the session to find you on IRC Networks or Channels.

Search Engines
A web search engine is an interactive tool to help people locate information available via
the World Wide Web. Web search engines are actually databases that contain references
to thousands of resources. Users interact with database, submitting questions that ask the
databases if it contains that match a specific criteria.
There are many web search engines available on the web. A web search engine provides
an interface between the user and the underlying database. The interface presents the user

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with a place to type in a search string, which may be a word, a phrase a date or some
other criterion and a way to submit the request.
The web search engines runs the search string against a database, returns a list of
resources that match the criteria and displays the results to the user.
Some of the most popular search engines are:
AltaVista (http://www.altavista.digital.com)
Excite (http://www.excite.com)
Lycons (http://www.lycons.com)
Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com)

A look at search engines:

The World Wide Web is "indexed" through the use of search engines, which are also
referred to as
"spiders," "robots," "crawlers," or "worms". These search engines comb through the Web
documents, identifying text that is the basis for keyword searching. Each search engine
works in a different way. Some engines scan for information in the title or header of the
document; others look at the bold "headings" on the page for their information. The fact
that search engines gather information differently means that each will probably yield
different results. Therefore, it's wise to try more than one search engine when doing Web
searching.

The list below lists several search engines and how each one gathers information, plus
resources that evaluate the search engines.

Selected Search Engines (listed alphabetically)

Alta Vista

Alta Vista, maintained by The Digital Equipment Corp., indexes the full text of over 16
million pages including newsgroups. Check out the Alta Vista Tips page.

Excite Netsearch

Excite includes approximately 1.5 million indexed pages, including newsgroups. Check
out the Excite NetSearch handbook.

InfoSeek Net Search

Indexes full text of web pages, including selected newsgroups and electronic journals.
Just under one-half million pages indexed. Check out the InfoSeek Search Tips.

Inktomi
As of December 1995, the Inktomi search engine offers a database of approximately 2.8
million indexed Web documents and promises very fast search retrievals. Results are
ranked in order of how many of your searched terms are used on the retrieved pages.

Lycos
Lycos indexes web pages (1.5 million +), web page titles, headings, subheadings, URLs,
and significant text.
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Search results are returned in a ranked order.

Magellan
Magellan indexes over 80,000 web sites. Search results are ranked and annotated.

Open Text Index

Indexes full text of approximately 1.3 million pages. Check out the Open Text Help
pages for tips on using this search engine.

WebCrawler
Maintained by America Online, WebCrawler indexes over 200,000 pages on
approximately 75,000 web servers. URLs, titles, and document content are indexed.

WWWW -- World Wide Web Worm

Approximately 250,000 indexed pages; indexed content includes hypertext, URLs, and
document titles.

Yahoo
A favorite directory and search engine, Yahoo has organized over 80,000 Web sites
(including newsgroups) into 14 broad categories. Yahoo also maintains a comprehensive
list of links to Yahoo - Computers and Internet:Internet:World Wide Web: Searching the
Web other web search engines, indexes, and guides.

Finally the internet is a huge source of information in all fields of knowledge.

Datum will take your hand through this incredible world of information to get what you
need in a fast, reliable and professional way.

Advantages and Disadvantages of the Internet

Internet has been perhaps the most outstanding innovation in the field of communication
in the history of mankind. As with every single innovation, internet has its own
advantages and disadvantages. But usually, greater magnitude of advantages outweighs
its disadvantages.

During his evolution journey from Neanderthals to Homo erectus and then to Homo
sapiens, man has come long way. Because of his continuous quest for more and more
amenities and facilities, the nineties have seen a major turn around with the invention of
computers. 10 years ago, the term internet was practically anonymous to most of the
people. And today internet has become the most ever powerful tool for man throughout
the world. The internet is a collection of various services and resources.

Although, many people still think e-mail and World Wide Web as the principle
constituents of internet, there is lot more in store than e-mail, chat rooms, celebrity web
sites and search engines. It also became the best business tool of modern scenario. Today
internet has brought a globe in a single room. Right from news across the corner of the
world, wealth of knowledge to shopping, purchasing the tickets of your favorite movie-
everything is at your finger tips. Internet has great potential and lot to offer… however,

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like every single innovation in science and technology, internet has its own advantages
and disadvantages.

Advantages
Communication:
The foremost target of internet has always been the communication. And internet has
excelled beyond the expectations .Still; innovations are going on to make it faster, more
reliable. By the advent of computer’s Internet, our earth has reduced and has attained the
form of a global village.

Now we can communicate in a fraction of second with a person who is sitting in the other
part of the world. Today for better communication, we can avail the facilities of e-mail;
we can chat for hours with our loved ones. There are plenty messenger services in
offering. With help of such services, it has become very easy to establish a kind of global
friendship where you can share your thoughts, can explore other cultures of different
ethnicity.

Information
Information is probably the biggest advantage internet is offering. The Internet is a virtual
treasure trove of information. Any kind of information on any topic under the sun is
available on the Internet. The search engines like Google, yahoo is at your service on the
Internet. You can almost find any type of data on almost any kind of subject that you are
looking for. There is a huge amount of information available on the internet for just about
every subject known to man, ranging from government law and services, trade fairs and
conferences, market information, new ideas and technical support, the list is end less.

Students and children are among the top users who surf the Internet for research. Today,
it is almost required that students should use the Internet for research for the purpose of
gathering resources. Teachers have started giving assignments that require research on
the Internet. Almost every coming day, researches on medical issues become much easier
to locate. Numerous web sites available on the net are offering loads of information for
people to research diseases and talk to doctors online at sites such as, America’s Doctor.
During 1998 over 20 million people reported going online to retrieve health information.

Entertainment
Entertainment is another popular raison d'être why many people prefer to surf the
Internet. In fact, media of internet has become quite successful in trapping multifaceted
entertainment factor. Downloading games, visiting chat rooms or just surfing the Web are
some of the uses people have discovered. There are numerous games that may be
downloaded from the Internet for free. The industry of online gaming has tasted dramatic
and phenomenal attention by game lovers. Chat rooms are popular because users can
meet new and interesting people. In fact, the Internet has been successfully used by
people to find life long partners. When people surf the Web, there are numerous things
that can be found. Music, hobbies, news and more can be found and shared on the
Internet.

Services
Many services are now provided on the internet such as online banking, job seeking,
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purchasing tickets for your favorite movies, guidance services on array of topics
engulfing the every aspect of life, and hotel reservations. Often these services are not
available off-line and can cost you more.
E-Commerce
Ecommerce is the concept used for any type of commercial maneuvering, or business
deals that involves the transfer of information across the globe via Internet. It has become
a phenomenon associated with any kind of shopping, almost anything. You name it and
Ecommerce with its giant tentacles engulfing every single product and service will make
you available at your door steps. It has got a real amazing and wide range of products
from household needs, technology to entertainment.

Disadvantages

Theft of Personal information

If you use the Internet, you may be facing grave danger as your personal information
such as name, address, credit card number etc. can be accessed by other culprits to make
Your problems worse.

Spamming:
Spamming refers to sending unwanted e-mails in bulk, which provide no purpose and
needlessly obstruct the entire system. Such illegal activities can be very frustrating for
you, and so instead of just ignoring it, you should make an effort to try and stop these
activities so that using the Internet can become that much safer.

Virus threat
Virus is nothing but a program which disrupts the normal functioning of your computer
systems. Computers attached to internet are more prone to virus attacks and they can end
up into crashing your whole hard disk, causing you considerable headache.

Pornography:
This is perhaps the biggest threat related to your children’s healthy mental life. A very
serious issue concerning the Internet. There are thousands of pornographic sites on the
Internet that can be easily found and can be a detrimental factor to letting children use the
Internet.

Though, internet can also create havoc, destruction

Spamming
Sometimes having an e-mail account can be very frustrating. People will fill up your
mailbox with advertisement, forwarded messages, product details, business offers, and all
sorts of unwanted junk.
Separating the messages you really want from the hundreds of unwanted mails is a
daunting task. This process is called spamming, makes people hate e-mail.

INTERNET SECURITY

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Internet security involves the protection of a computer's internet account and files from
intrusion of an unknown user. Basic security measures involve protection by well
selected passwords, change of file permissions and back up of computer's data.

Security concerns are in some ways peripheral to normal business working, but serve to
highlight just how important it is that business users feel confident when using IT
systems. Security will probably always be high on the IT agenda simply because cyber
criminals know that a successful attack is very profitable. This means they will always
strive to find new ways to circumvent IT security, and users will consequently need to be
continually vigilant. Whenever decisions need to be made about how to enhance a
system, security will need to be held uppermost among its requirements.
Internet security professionals should be fluent in the four major aspects:

§ Penetration testing
§ Intrusion Detection
§ Incidence Response
§ Legal / Audit Compliance
Some apparently useful programs also contain features with hidden malicious intent.
Such programs are known as Malware, Viruses, Trojans, Worms, Spyware and Bots.

§ Bots are programs that take over and use the resources of a computer system over
a network \without consent, and communicate those results to others who may control
the Bots.
The above concepts overlap and they can obviously be combined. The terminology is
evolving.

Antivirus programs and Internet security programs are useful in protecting a computer or
programmable device / system from malware.
Such programs are used to detect and usually eliminate viruses. Anti-virus software can
be purchased or downloaded via the internet. Care should be taken in selecting anti-virus
software, as some programs are not as effective as others in finding and eliminating
viruses or malware. Also, when downloading anti-virus software from the Internet, one
should be cautious as some websites say they are providing protection from viruses with
their software, but are really trying to install malware on your computer by disguising it
as something else.

§ Malware is the most general name for any malicious software designed for
example to infiltrate, spy on or damage a computer or other programmable device or
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 system of sufficient complexity, such as a home or office computer system, network,
mobile phone, PDA, automated device or robot.
§ Viruses are programs which are able to replicate their structure or effect by
integrating themselves or references to themselves, etc into existing files or structures
on a penetrated computer. They usually also have a malicious or humorous payload
designed to threaten or modify the actions or data of the host device or system
without consent. For example by deleting, corrupting or otherwise hiding information
from its owner.
§ A computer virus is a small program written to alter the way a computer operates,
without the permission or knowledge of the user. A virus executes itself. It often
places its own code in the path of executable files with a copy of the virus
infected file.
§ Virus can infect desktop computers and network servers alike. Some viruses are
programmed to damage the computer by damaging programs, deleting files, or
reformatting the hard disk.
§ Viruses can be transmitted as attachments to an e-mail note or in a downloaded
file, or be present on a diskette or CD. The immediate source of the e-mail note,
downloaded file, or diskette you've received is usually unaware that it contains a
virus. Some viruses wreak their effect as soon as their code is executed; other
viruses lie dormant until circumstances cause their code to be executed by the
computer. Some viruses are benign or playful in intent and effect ("Happy
Birthday, Ludwig!") and some can be quite harmful, erasing data or causing your
hard disk to require reformatting. A virus that replicates itself by resending itself
as an e-mail attachment or as part of a network message is known as a worm.

§ Trojans (Trojan Horses) are programs which may pretend to do one thing, but in
reality steal information, alter it or cause other problems on a such as a computer or
programmable device / system.
§ Spyware includes programs that surreptitiously monitor keystrokes, or other
activity on a computer system and report that information to others without consent.w
§ Worms are programs which are able to replicate themselves over a (possibly
extensive) computer network, and also perform malicious acts that may ultimately
affect a whole society / economy.
§ Worms are programs that replicate themselves from system to system without
the use of a host file. This is in contrast to the viruses which require the spreading
of an infected host file. In a computer, a worm is a self-replicating virus that does
not alter files but resides in active memory and duplicates itself. Worms use parts
of an operating system that are automatic and usually invisible to the user. It is
common for worms to be noticed only when their uncontrolled replication
consumes system resources, slowing or halting other tasks.
§

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 In computing the system software, hardware and information is always under threat of
either being altered, destroyed, accessed illegally and stolen. These threats can be caused
by errors and by accidents, natural hazards, and crimes against information technology
crime using information technology or worms and viruses. Due to these threats there is a
great need to protect the computer system and its resources.

Measures and controls that ensure confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the
information processed and stored by a computer.

PRIVATE KEY CRYPTOGRAPHY

In private key cryptography the same key is used by both parties. The sender uses this
key and an encryption algorithm to encrypt data; the receiver uses the same key and the
corresponding encryption algorithm to decrypt the data.
In symmetric-key cryptography, the algorithm used for decryption is the inverse of
the algorithm used for encryption. This means that if the encryption algorithm uses a
combination of additions and multiplication, the decryption algorithm uses a combination
of division and subtraction.

Symmetric-key algorithms are efficient; it takes less time to encrypt a message using a
symmetric-key algorithm than it takes to encrypt using a public- key algorithm. The
reason is that the key is usually smaller. For this reason symmetric-key algorithms are
used to encrypt and decrypt long messages.

Symmetric algorithms has two major disadvantages. Each pair of users must have a
unique symmetric key. This means that if N people in the world want to use this method,
there needs to be N (N-1)/2 symmetric keys. For example, for 1 million people to
communicate, 500 billion symmetric keys are needed. The distribution of the keys
between two parties can be difficult

PUBLIC-KEY CRYPTOGRAPHY
In public-key cryptography, there are two keys: a private key and a public key. The
private key is kept by the receiver. The public key is announced to the public.

In public-key encryption/decryption, the public key that is used for encryption is

different from the private key that is used for decryption. The public key is available to
the public; the private key is available only to an individual.
Public key encryption/decryption has two advantages. First it removes the restriction
of a shared symmetric key between two entities (eg persons ) who need to communicate
with each other. A shared symmetric key is shared by the two parties and cannot be used
when one of them wants to communicate with a third party. In public-key
encryption/decryption, each entity creates a pair of keys; the private one is kept, and the
public one is distributed. Each entity is independent, and the pair of keys created can be
used to communicate with any other entity. The second advantage is that the number of
keys needed is reduced tremendously. In this system, for 1 million users to communicate,
only two million keys are needed, not 500 billion, as was the case in symmetric-key
cryptography.

Public-key cryptography also has two disadvantages. The big disadvantage is the
complexity of the algorithm. If we want the method to be effective, the algorithms needs

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large numbers. Calculating the cipher text from plain text using the long keys takes a lot
of time. That is the main reason that public-key cryptography is not recommended for
large amounts of text.

Security can be enforced through:

Access control
Before using the computer resources a user can be required to use his or her credit card,
debit card or ATM card. These cards are used for identification purposes. The users can
also be given unique identification characters like pin, password or digital signatures.
Biometrics can also be used for identification purposes. This is where the characteristics
of an individual like fingerprints and voice are used.

Data encryption
This is where data is altered before storage or sending via the internet. In this state it
cannot be used until it is changed in to a form that can be read and understood.

Use of firewalls
This is a system of both hardware and software that blocks unauthorized users and
outside the organization from entering the intranet. The firewall all internets and other
network activity, a firewall identifies unauthorized users, searches for viruses and
implements other security measures.
Is a combination of hardware and software that enforces a boundary between two or more
networks for example between a corporate network and the internet to which it is
connected.
A firewall protects networks from unwanted traffic. The primary goal of a firewall is to
let good traffic pass though which bad traffic gets blocked. The most important part of a
firewalls its access control features that distinguish between goal and bad traffic. It
Provides a single point of entry and exist from the network to another.

PROXIY SERVER
A proxy server is a form of application server that works differently from firewall. Proxy
Service change the network addresses of the nodes on the other network.
For example in the internet would not know that other node exits behind the proxy server
nor the addresses of those nodes.

Audit control
This is a program which keeps a record of what computers are used, and the files that
are opened and who uses them. This creates a record of how transaction was carried out
from the input to the output stage. The record is also known as audit trail.

Recovery strategies
When the computer crashes or resources are lost suddenly special software can be used
to recover the lost resources.

Backup
All programs and data in the computer should also be backed up. This where copies of
others are also stored in a secondary device.

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 HACKER
Is a person who gains unauthorized access to computers or telecommunications
systems, for a reason only known to themselves. It is a threat to organizations information
is always punishable by law.

CRACKERS
Is a person who illegally breaks into computers for malicious purposes. It can be for
financial gain, to shutdown hardware, pirate software or to destroy or alter data. It is also
punishable by law.

ELECTRONIC MAIL

Finding an E-mail Address

How do you go about finding someone’s e-mail address? You can find a person only if he
has taken the pains to register his details.
Although there is no comprehensive directory of e-mail or Internet addresses, there are
several search and reference tools you can consult. Some of them are:-
Lookup! Directory services (http://www.lookup.com)
Netfind (http://www.nova.edu)
netPages (www.aldea.com)
etc

Free E-mail Accounts

You can have your personal e-mail account free of cost. All you need to access your
mailbox is an Internet connection.
There are many companies, which offer this service, absolutely free. All you have to do is
register, choose an e-mail ID and give a password.
Some of these sites, which offer this service, are:-
Microsoft Hotmail (http//://www.hotmail.com)
MailCity (http://www.mailcity.com)
Yahoo! Mail (http://www.mail.yahoo.com)

MAILING LISTS
Electronic mail is far more flexible and powerful than you might at first imagine.
E-mail can be used to run a program in a remote computer and have the results sent back
to you.
E-mail also offers a great way to stay in touch with special interest groups. A mailing list
is a way to share information via electronic mail with many people, usually on a specific
topic or for a special purpose.
People choose to be part of mailing list by subscribing to the list. Once you have joined
the list (or subscribing to the list), you will receive regular information by e-mail about
the subject that particular list is concerned with.
Mailing lists provide a way of keeping up with the developments and happenings in a
particular field of interest with minimum effort and cost.

How Does Mailing List Work?

This is how a mailing list works;
A message is sent to a single e-mail address, which is referred to as the mailing list
address.
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This same message is then redistributed or “reflected” to all of the people subscribed to
the list.

The single, central e-mail address for the list is also referred to as a mail reflector.
Mailing lists originated on a network called BITNET. BITNET was created to connect
universities in the united states.

NEWSGROUPS
Newsgroups on the internet have little to do with ‘news’, but everything to do with
discussion and debate.
Newsgroups are essentially public e-mail discussion forums where participants ‘post’
their messages to be seen by all readers of the newsgroup.
Anyone reading the message can chose to reply either publicly (to the newsgroup) or
privately (to the originator of the message).
Newsgroups provide a forum for interested people to discuss topics of common interest.

Mailing Lists vs Newsgroups

Both mailing lists and newsgroups offer a forum of discussion on the Internet, but they
operate in different ways.
Mailing lists relay the messages to your e-mail address. So you need to subscribe to them
to read the messages.
But messages posted on a newsgroup could be viewed by anyone as long as the service
provides supplies the newsgroup.
Newsgroups Classifications:
news-Groups concerned with news network.
comp-Computer oriented groups dealing with topic like technical advice, game hints,
software information etc.
alt-alternative group dealing with a wide range of subjects
misic-newsgroups that are difficult to classify.
biz-business newsgroups dealing with business subjects like marketing & advertising.
sci-groups devoted to scientific debate and research and development

Businesses must do their research and find out what people want, or figure out how to
make people want a product they are producing.
This needs to capture and record information about what people want has led to many IT-
based databases and data warehouses of which businesses are now boasting.

Types of discussion lists:

Moderated vs. Unmoderated Lists

Mailing lists can be moderated or unmoderated. The distinction is whether messages are
automatically forwarded to all subscribers (unmoderated) or whether a moderator (a
human being) first screens and perhaps combines similar messages before sending them
to subscribers (moderated).

Open vs. Closed Lists

Electronic discussions can also be "open" or "closed." Anyone can subscribe to an open
discussion, but a closed discussion is limited to a particular group of persons, for
example, those in a particular professional field.

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Introduction to network news:
Network News (sometimes referred to as Usenet News) is a service comprised of several
thousand electronic discussions providing users an effective way to share information
with others on just about any topic.

If you're unclear about the concept of Network News, it's helpful to think about a bulletin
board that you might see on campus.

Here, one might find posted messages advertising a futon for sale, asking for students to
join a math study group. In the newsgroup environment, the same kind of process take
place:
User X may access a newsgroup on a particular topic and post a message, question, or
respond to a previously posted message, and anyone accessing that newsgroup would
then be able to see User X's message.

Network News newsgroups provide this same kind of forum online, where users have
access to the messages posted by all other users of that newsgroup.
Network News has been described as an "international meeting place" where you're likely
to find a discussion going on just about anything.
How Does Network News work?
Messages posted on Network News newsgroups are sent from host computer to host
computer all over the world, using the network news transfer protocol.
Because Network News newsgroups are located on one server, Network News is a very
efficient way to share information that might otherwise be disseminated to several
individual users.
This way, several people can read a given newsgroup message, but the host system stores
only one copy of it.

E-MAIL ETHICS
e-mail messages are a lot like letters. Simplicity, directness, and brevity will make people
read your messages. Our e-mails says a lot about our values, our attention to detail, and
the reputation of the organization we represent. Like any form of communication there
are certain manners that you should follow when using the e-mail. Here are some
guidelines, which will help you in getting the most out of your electronic mailing system.
• Let your messages have a personal touch. Write it the way you would say it. Use
everyday language. Vary your sentence length.
• Be friendly, use humor to break up the tension of what you have to say.
• Be succinct and considerate of the recipient’s time and online charges, especially
with services that charge by the hour or by the size of the messages. E-mail
messages work best if they are short and to the point.
• Know your recipient. Different people have different ideas of what is acceptable.
Find out and respect each person’s wishes.
• Avoid sarcasm, unless you’re sure it will work, and think carefully before using e-
mail to express anger. With e-mail, once it’s sent, it’s gone.
• .Be careful about your use of irony or even some forms of humor, which can be
misinterpreted. Unlike face-to-face meetings or phone conversations, there are no
visual or oral clues to provide a sense of what is going on.
• Be brief. This not only saves bandwidth but also cuts down on eyestrain.
• Make the subject line precise.

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 • Don’t copy the full text of along message into your response. Copy only parts you
need to refer to.
• Don’t assume that everyone likes emoticons (emotional icons). Some people find
them annoying.
• Look sharp. Good writing is 90% clarity, and half of clarity is appearance. No one
likes facing a long unbroken block of text characters. Put a blank line between
paragraphs to help you organize your thinking.
• Use your technology. A memory-resident spellchecker or thesaurus will help you
avoid the embarrassment of a misspelled word or a word used incorrectly.
• Compose your messages off-line. A regular word processor is much more
powerful than the text editors used on most e-mail systems.
• Read the message before sending it, like your title and company name or other e-
mail addresses you have crept in.
• Most e-mail programs these days let you insert what’s called a signature at the
bottom of the message. This can be anything from a clever quote to some
additional information about you, like your title and company name or other e-
mail addresses you have.
• Configure your e-mail client to check all your accounts in one shot.
• If security is not a concern, configure your e-mail client to remember passwords.
• Get a free-mail account for personal e-mail or mailing lists.
• If you are sending large files as attachments, use some compression utility like
pkzip, WinRAR, before sending them.
• Don’t send copies of e-mail to people unless they need to be copied. In addition to
cluttering up their mailboxes, it can place them in an awkward position, making
them feel as if they have to do something with the information. It can also be
intimidating to the main recipient.
• Stay on the topic if you are posting to a public bulletin board, forum or news
group. Most are focused on a specific topic, and messages that stray too far from
the topic can be annoying.
• Briefly describe who you are if the recipient doesn’t already know.
• Be aware that e-mail can be archived and, under certain circumstances, may not
be secure. On-line services and public e-mail providers protect the confidentiality
of their subscribers’ e-mail, but some companies consider employee e-mail sent
over the office network to be company property and subject to security.
• Avid “Urgent” or “Priority” unless it really is.
• Avoid using all capital letters. IT’S THE EQUIVALENT OF SHOUTING! Also,
it is harder to read.

• You should check your mail regularly. Unlike a fax or normal mail, an e-mail
message in the most cases is not automatically delivered to your desk. You have
to log on to check your mail.

INTERNET CODE OF CONDUCT

The Internet relies on the cooperation of its constituents- users with users, service
providers with other service providers, and users and service providers with one another.
The following guidelines for conduct were developed from an Internet Society (ISOC)
document available at http://www.isoc.org.
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Mailing Lists, Newsgroups and Bulletin Boards
v Post within the forum’s scope/topic.
v Avoid redundant, empty, or stupid postings.
v Respect the opinions of other participants.
v Be careful about the lack of social cues and possible ambiguities in text
communications.
v Use common courtesy when posting critical, negative comments (avoid flaming).
v Be sensitive to the forum’s standards in respect to obscenity.
v Do not use expressions that are considered sexually harassing, racial, or in some
way discriminatory.

Advertising
v Do not post to lists or boards or newsgroups whose purpose states no advertising.
Use browsing services such as WAIS, Gopher and WWW to list products and services.
v Use e-mail enabled information services like mailing lists to which users can
subscribe or send email to obtain information.
Privacy
v Do not invade the personal privacy of others.
v Do not forward e-mail without permission.
v Do not deliberately break into computer systems.
Security
v Systems break-ins or aiding others to break into systems is illegal.
v Getting passwords or other access information fraudulently is unacceptable
Intellectual Property
v Copying or making available copies of protected works without the authors
permission is illegal.

HOW WEB BROWSERS AFFECT YOUR WORK

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is an authoring language used to create documents
on the World Wide Web.

The Beginnings of HTML

The World Wide Web (www) grew out of experiments that were carried out at the CERN
laboratories in Switzerland. Tim Berners Lee, along with a team of developers, took time
out to investigate and build a way of transmitting information in a way, in a format that
became known as Hypertext transport Protocol, or just HTTP.

Using a markup language designed for simplicity and with a flexible structure, Hypertext
Markup Language (HTML), allowed text and graphics to be displayed in web browser or
other suitably enabled application. Certain parts of the document could become
hyperlinks, which when clicked caused a different page or a different section of the page
to be displayed.
A markup language is simply a series of elements, each delimited with special characters,
that define how text or other items enclosed within the elements should be displayed e.g
<EM>this is some emphasized text</EM>.
HTML is a markup language broadly based on the standard Generalized Markup
Language (SGML). SGML is a way of describing languages, and is not itself a language
used to create pages.

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From these simple beginnings, extra feature were added to build version 4.0 of HTML
that we use today. These extra features provided for more flexible text styling (such as
the <FONT> element), and more control over the final layout of the page (such as the use
of tables and frames).
As far as serving up these pages of information, text files and graphics can be delivered
to the user by a web server application, which simply reads them from the disk and
converts the output to the correct HTTP protocol for transmission across the network. At
the client user end, the browser takes the incoming stream and converts it into a page that
can be displayed.
The great strength of HTML and HTTP, besides university, is that the document can
contain information about the meaning of the content, and the way that writer intended it
to be perceived. It can be read by applications that don’t actually display visually: e.g,
blind people can use special application that converts it into speech.

HYPERTEXT & HYPERMEDIA

The basic concept of the World Wide Web, and the most revolutionary idea envisioned
by Berner-Lee, is the use of hypertext to link information on related topics over the
Internet.

Hypertext is a non-linear way of organizing information on related topics over the

Internet. When using Hypertext system, you can jump from one related topic to another,
quickly find information that interests you, and return to your starting point or move onto
another related topic of interest.
On the web clickable hyperlinks, which can be either text or images, can connect you to
another web page or allow you to download a file, such as a sound, image, movie or
executable file. Therefore hypermedia is the linking of different types of media on the
World Wide Web.

HTML AS A MARKUP LANGUAGE

A markup language is a structured language that lets you identify common sections of a
document such as headings, paragraphs, and lists. An HTML file includes text and
HTML markup elements that identity these sections.

Browser Chaos
As different browsers tried to attract market share, a set of proprietary HTML elements
evolved that centered around the use of each particular browser. E.g. <FONT> and
<CENTRE> elements, which specifically developed for Netscape browser.
Adding to this confusing compatibility issue are the elements that are strictly proprietary,
such as <MARQUEE> (Internet Explorer only) which creates scrolling text and
<BLINK> for (Netscape Navigator), which makes text to blink on and off. These
elements work only within the browser for which they were designed and are ignored by
other browsers.

XML: AN OPEN STANDARD FOR STRUCTRING

XML is a subset of SGML. Unlike HTML, XML is a meta-language, not a language
itself, but a language that lets you describe other languages.
As a meta-language, XML allows you to create your own elements to meet your
information needs, which significantly distinguishes it from the predefined elements of

36
HTML. XML provides a format of describing structured data that can be shared by
multiple applications across multiple platforms.

XML Describes Data

The power of data representation in XML comes from separating display and style from
the structure of data and structure only and not presentation. Where HTML contains
elements that describe a word as bold or italic, XML declares an element to be a book
title, item, price or product measurement.
Once the data is structured in XML, it can be displayed across a variety of media, such as
a computer display, television screen or handheld devices using an associated style sheet
that contains the appropriate display information. Currently cascading style sheet (CSS)
is the only complete style language for XML though the W3C is working on the
Extensible style Language (XSL), which is derived from XML.

XML Allows Better Access to Data

XML is valuable because it allows access to more meaningful searches for information,
development of flexible applications, multiple views of data and based on a non-
proprietary standard that supports the open nature of the web.

HTML
One of the greatest challenges facing HTML authors is designing pages that display
properly in multiple browsers. Every browser contains a program called a parser that
interprets the markup tags in an HTML file and display the results in the canvas area of
the browser interface.
The logic for interpreting the HTML tags varies from browser to browser, resulting in
many, possibly conflicting interpretations of the way the HTML file is displayed.

LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR CODING

One way to create portable pages is to use a lowest common denominator approach. This
approach provides the greatest acceptance across browsers because the authors choose to
code their HTML using the next-to-last release of HTML e.g when browsers supporting
HTML 4.0 were released, many continued coding to the HTML 3.2 standard, knowing
that their HTML would render more consistently because the browser understood all of
the 3.2 specifications.

SOLVING THE BROWSER DILEMMA

You must test your work in as many browsers as possible during and at the end of the
development process to make sure that your pages will render properly. Knowing your
audience helps take a major step towards the correct implementation of your site.

SHOULD YOU USE AN HTML EDITOR?

You can create or generate HTML code to build Web pages in many ways. The tool that
has gained the greatest universal acceptance is Notepad, the simple text editor that comes
with windows 3.1, 95, and 98.
On Macintosh the equivalent tool is teach text or Simple text.
You can also use a number of HTML editing programs, such as Adobe, PageMill, Net
Object’s Fusion , Micrrosoft FronPage, and Macromedia, Dreamweaver, to name a few.

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CUTTING-EDGE CODING
Another strategy to adopt when designing your web site is to stay at the cutting edge.
Some designers insist that their users keep up with them by requiring the latest browser.
This design strategy can result in visually exciting and interaction sites that keep pace
with the latest technology. One can use plug-in enhancements that render certain media
types such as macromedia Flash animations.
Plug-ins are helper applications that assist a browser in rendering a special effect.
Without the plug-in, your user cannot see the results of your work.

BROWSER-SPECIFIC CODING
A site coded only for one browser may alienate a significant number of readers who
immediately leave because they do not have the correct browser. On the web, you never
can be sure of the type of browser your user has. This method of browser specific coding
however may be viable on a company intranet, where you or you can specify that all
users have the same version and brand of browser.

CODING FOR MULTIPLE SCREEN RESOLUTIONS

No matter how carefully you design pages, you can never know how users view your
work because you do not know their monitors’ screen resolution. A computer monitor’s
screen resolution is the horizontal and vertical height and width of the computer screen in
pixels. Most monitors have to be set to at least two resolutions, whereas large monitors
have a large range from which to choose. User screen resolution is a factor over which
you have no control.
The three most common screen resolutions (traditionally expressed as width X height) are
640 * 480, 800 * 600, and 1024 * 768. Some users choose to use the highest resolution of
1024 * 768, allowing them to display more on the screen.

BANDWIDTH CONCERNS
Access via cable modem is currently the most reliable high-speed connection to the Web
for home users, but less than 20 percent of American households have access to cable
modems. Corporations primarily rely on T1 or Integrated Services Digital Network
(ISDN) connections.

OTHER WEB SITE DESIGN PRINCIPLES

1. DESIGN FOR THE MEDIUM

When designing a web site, remember the destination is a computer, not the printed page,
and the language is hypertext, not linear text. As a Web page designer, you must create a
web page specifically for the computer screen. You must consider the layout, fonts, and
colors and how they will appear.

1. Craft the look and feel

The interface that user must navigate often is called the look and feel of a web site.
Users look and feel when they explore the information design of your site.
2. Make your design portable
To be successful, your web site design must be portable and accessible across
different browsers, operating systems and computer platforms. Many designers make
the mistake of testing in only one environment, assuming that their pages look the
same to all of their users.
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 3. Design for low bandwidth
Plan your pages so that they are accessible at a variety of connection speeds.
4. Plan for clear presentation and easy access to your information
Your information design- the presentation and organization of your information is the
single most important in determining the success of your site. Present your
information so it is easy to read. Many web sits fail this criterion by using too many
fonts, colors, and lengthy passages of text.

2. DESING THE WHOLE SITE

When designing your site, plan the unifying themes and structure that will hold the
pages together. Your choices of colors, fonts, graphics, and page layout should
communicate a visual theme to the user that orients them to your site’s content. The
theme should reflect the impression that you or your organization want to convey.
1. Create smooth transitions
Plan to create a unified look among the sections and pages of your site. Reinforce the
identifying elements of the site and create smooth another by repeating colors and
fonts and by using a page layout that allows different hierarchical layout.
2. Use a grid to provide visual structure
The structure of a web page is imposed by the grid or page template you choose for
your page design. The grid is a conceptual layout that organizes the page into column
and rows. You can use grid to enforce structure, but you also can break out of the grid
to provide variety and highlight important information.
3. Use of active white space
White spaces are the blank areas of a page. Use white space deliberately in your
design, rather than as an after thought. Good use of white space guides the reader and
defines the areas of your page. White space that is used deliberately is called active
white space.

3. DESIGN FOR THE USER

Keep your design efforts centered solely on your user. Knowing your audience
answers almost all design questions- if it serves the audience, keep it, if it is
potentially distracting or annoying, eliminate it find out what users expect from your
site.
i. Design for interaction
Think about how the user wants to interact with the information on your web
page. Design for your content type, and decide if the user will read or scan your
pages.
For example, suppose your page is a collection of links, such as a main page or
section page. Users want to interact with these types of pages by scanning the
content, scrolling if necessary, pointing
to graphics to see if they are hyperlinked, and clicking linked text. Design for this
type of user interaction by using meaningful column headings, linked text, and
short descriptions.

ii. Design for location

It is difficult to predict the user’s exact viewing path. There is however, general
agreement on the relative areas of screen importance.
During page design rank the information you want to display and then position
the most important on the middle of the window, the next most important across
the top, and so on, with the least important or static information in the left margin.
39
 iii. Guide the user’s eye
The user can traverse a page in variety of ways. Human engineering studies show
a wide range of results when tracking user’s eye movements.
Knowing these common user habits can help you decide where to focus the user’s
attention by object placement, text weight and color use.
Use shapes and color to reinforce location or topic.
iv. Keep a flat hierarchy
Do not make users navigate through many layers of your web site to find the
information they want.
Structure your web site to include section or topical-level navigation pages so
users quickly find their path.
4. DESIGN FOR THE SCREEN
The computer display, the destination for your web pages, is very different from print-
based media. You must take the following differences into account when planning your
web site:
The shape of a computer screen-Although most paper-based media are portrait-oriented,
the computer screen is landscape oriented that is, wider than it is tall. Your page design
must reflect the space within which it will be displayed and read.
While a piece of paper reflects light, a computer screen has light passing through it from
behind. This changes the nature of the colors and contrast you choose to employ. Design
pages that provide enough contrast for the user to read, but so much that the colors
distract from the content easily.
A screen is not a page-although tempting, it often is a poor choice to take documents that
are formatted for print and post them online without considering the destination medium.

Electronic Commerce
Electronic commerce is commerce but it is commerce accelerated and enhanced by IT, in
particular, the Internet. It enables customers, consumers and companies to form powerful
new relationships that would not be possible without the enabling technologies.
For businesses, electronic commerce includes:-
1. Performing transactions with customers over the Internet for purposes such as
home shopping, banking, and electronic cash use.
2. Performing transactions with other organizations through the use of electronic
data interchange (EDI)-the direct computer-to-computer transfer of information.
3. Distributing information to prospective customers through interactive advertising,
sales, and marketing efforts.

MULTIMEDIA
Multimedia is, combination of text, graphic art, sound, animation, and video elements.
Alternatively multimedia can be described as woven combinations of digitally
manipulated text, photographs, graphic art, sound, animation, and video elements. When
an end user-the viewer of a multimedia project-to control what and when the elements are
delivered, it is interactive multimedia when you provide a structure of linked elements
through which the user can navigate, interactive multimedia becomes hypermedia.
Although the definition of multimedia is a simple one, making it work can be
complicated. Not only do you need to understand how to make each multimedia element
stand up and dance, but you also need to know how to use multimedia computer tools and
technologies to weave together. The people who weave multimedia into meaningful
tapestries are multimedia developers.

40
The software vehicle, the messages, and the content presented on a computer or
television screen together constitute a multimedia project. If the project will be shipped or
sold to consumers or end users, typically in a box or sleeve or on the Internet, with or
without instructions, it is a multimedia title. Your project may also be a “page” or “site”
on the World Wide Web, where you can weave the elements of multimedia into
documents with HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) or DHTML (Dynamic Hypertext
Markup Language) and play rich media files created in such programs as Macromedia’s
Flash, Adobe’s LiveMotion, or Apple’s QuickTime by installing “plug-ins” into a
browser application such as Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator.

APPLICATIONS OF MULTIMEDIA
Multimedia in Business
Business applications for multimedia include presentations, training, marketing,
advertising, product demos, databases, categories, and networked communications. Voice
mail and video conferencing are provided on many local wide area networks (LANs and
WANs).
Multimedia at Home
From gardening to cooking to home design, remodeling, and repair to genealogy
software, multimedia has entered the home. Most of the multimedia projects will reach
the home via television sets or monitors with built-in interactive user inputs.
Multimedia in Public Places
In hotels, train stations, shopping malls, museums, and grocery stores, multimedia will
become available at stand-alone terminals or kiosks to provide information and help.
Such installations reduce demand on traditional information booths and personnel, add
value, and they can work around the clock, even in the middle of the night, with live help
is off duty.
Multimedia in Entertainment
One of the earliest applications of multimedia was for computer games. Multimedia is
being used in movie-making very extensively. With the help of multimedia, moviemakers
now have the capability of creating what they want-the imagination is the only limitation.

Multimedia in software training

Software developers are bundling multimedia presentations along with their applications
to introduce their features and to walk through the program. For software companies will
take a huge load off the technical support personnel.

Multimedia in education & Training

Multimedia is extensively used for education and training in schools, business and at
home. It brings presentations alive with sounds, movies and interactively.
Multimedia on the Web
When the WWW was introduced, it was all text. Soon graphics were added and this
opened up new possibilities. Photographs and drawings could be used to illustrate and
explain products and accessories, to demonstrate the workings of technology and nature
or just make the pages more attractive.

Multimedia in Office Work

Multimedia is not just for expensive commercial productions. It can be used to enhance
ordinary communications. Using technologies such as OLE (Object Linking and
Embedding) and ActiveX, or Open Doc, one can insert sound and movie objects into
41
other applications such as word processing or spreadsheet documents. Double clicking on
the embedded icon in the document will run the media clip or play the sound.

Utilities like Windows media player controls multimedia hardware devices and play
media sequences such as video clips, animations, and sound.

THE MULTIMEDIA DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

The steps taken in developing a multimedia product are like those of any software project
because work has to be organized and a team of people has to cooperate to achieve the
implementation.
I. Project Initiation
II. Resource Identification and planning
III. Assess system requirements
IV. Design the system
V. Develop the system
VI. Test
VII. Documentation
VIII. Deployment and Acceptance
IX. Deliver
I. Project Initiation

This phase establishes the project goals that are to be achieved by the end product. It
tends to outline the benefits of the multimedia developed to the end-user.

Its a summary of the project and it provides the reader a bigger picture of what is
expected in the next phases. It answers the following

• Who is the product aimed at?

• What will the user be able to achieve with this product?
• Why is the product worth using and developing?

II. Resource Identification and Planning

The resources to be used are then identified by establishing the project plan. Lack of
planning resources can lead to lack of achievements of goal with wastage of time,
money and effort.

The following are usually specified:

• Activity Schedule

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 Schedule the project tasks by breaking down the multimedia components into tasks.
Identify the critical path of the project so as to know the time for accomplishing the
project. Scheduling will also give the project milestone i.e. an identifiable point
which has been reached on the project through completion of certain activities.

• Equipments and facilities

Identify the hardware and software required in development of the multimedia e.g.
cameras, microphones, speakers, camera rail, animation development software e.g.
Macromedia FlashMx

• Human Resource

The identified tasks will show the expertise required. People with different
professions are often required in the multimedia process. These include:

o A project manager to steer the process.

o Software and program designers
o High-level programmers
o Low-level programmers
o Hardware specialists
o Interface designers
o Text and technical authors
o Graphic designers
o Still and video Photographers
o Script writers
o Video directors

• Cost Budget and timing resources

After identification of the resources, they are associated with the different tasks
within the project. The activity schedule is therefore merged with the human resource.
Timings are usually dependent on the human resource i.e. person-days. Adjust the
person-day relationship in the most convenient way to ensure time maximization and
cut-down of costs. The cost budget should be within what is offered by the project
sponsors.

III. Assess system requirements

In assessing the system requirements

• Technical requirements

These generally translate to restrictions or constraints that will help guide in design.
This gives the versions of software and hardware to be used in the process’s design.

• Market or client requirements

43
Carry out a feasibility study to identify the user or market requirements. These
include:

o Educational background
o Level of technical expertise
o Physical or mental limitations
o Language and common terminology

• Task analysis

Ensure you understand everything by putting yourself in the users’ position. Be able
to know:

o The user
o Tasks the user performs
o How are these tasks learned
o How often users perform these tasks
o The relationship between users and data
o How users communicate with one another
o The time constraints on the tasks
o What happens when things go wrong

IV. Design the system

Interface design

This is a design of how the system will interface with the user.

• How will people use the system

• What problems will it solve for them
• How will it integrate with their environment

Functional design

Functional design describes how exactly the system will do what it is supposed to. It
includes:

• System architecture
• Data descriptions
• Unit-level code specification

Develop the system

Development of the system includes.

• Collect assets i.e. legal and copyrights, text, sound, photographs, graphics and
video.
• Create the user interface
• Write the code
• Edit content
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 • Integrating the media pieces

In all of these, there are two possible development approaches:

• Waterfall
• Prototyping

In either case, it is strongly advisable to use incremental development i.e. a method of

implementation and testing incrementally -a little more is added each time- until the
product is finished. It involves both development and maintenance. The product is
defined as finished when it satisfies all of its requirements. This model combines the
elements of the waterfall model with the iterative philosophy of prototyping.

V. Test
Testing includes the following:
o Unit-level testing, which ensures that system components i.e. sub-units work
as expected
o System-level testing, which ensures that the integrated system i.e. the whole
system works as expected
o Interface testing, which ensures that the system truly is consistent, easy to
use, and worth using

Allow plenty of time for testing.

VI. Documentation

Documentation is important and it is done for different viewers and users. These include:

i. Client
o Give the statement of the problem and the solution
o Give problem solution revisions
o Final evaluation report unto how it has solved the problem.
o Future plans like extensions or upgrades.
ii. Shareholder

Documentation for stakeholders is kept at a minimum because all they have to know is
what is being done and for what purposes.

iii. User

o High quality manuals that guide on system usage.

o An easy getting started guide
o Job implications from system i.e. if it is to change job procedures.

iv. Development and Maintenance Team

o Overall view of project team

o Code documentation for programmers to update and maintain product.
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 o Style documentation to show interface and principles guidelines, visual design
rules and semiotic decisions.

VII. Deployment and Acceptance

This is the last phase and it gives a summary of the whole process by outlining:

o What the problem was.

o The proposed solution
o The criteria by which the solution was to be judged
o The system
o How the system satisfies the criteria
o How the users like it
o How it was delivered within time and budget.

It is important to note that some of the above phases can take place simultaneously or
through fast tracking. It all depends with planning and management of the process.

VIII. Deliver
When delivering the finished system, it is important to:

o Ensure that the correct end-users are aware of the new product
o Provide training, user manuals, or other support to make learning easier
o Gather feedback to help improve the next version and/or product

Summary
The Stages of a Multimedia Project
Most multimedia projects and Web projects must be undertaken in stages. Some stages
should be completed before other stages begin, and some stages may be skipped or
combined. Here are four basic stages in a multimedia project:
1. Planning and costing: A project always begins with an idea or a need that you
refine by outlining its messages and objectives. Identify how you will make each
message and objective work within your authoring system. Before you begin
developing, plan what writing skills, graphic art, music, video, and other
multimedia expertise will be required. Develop a creative graphic look and feel,
as a structure and navigation system that will let the viewer visit the messages and
content. Estimate the time needed to do all elements, and prepare budget. Work
up a short prototype or proof-of concept. The more time you spend getting your
arms around your project and defining its content and structure, the faster you can
later build it, and less reworking and rearranging will be required midstream.
Think it through before you start! Your creative ideas and “trys” will grow into
screens and buttons (the look and feel), and your proof-of-concept will test
whether your ideas work. You may discover that by breaking the rules, you can
create something terrific!
2. Designing and producing: Perform each of the planned tasks to create a finished
product. During this stage, there may be many feedback cycles with a client until
the client is happy.

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 3. Testing: Always test your programs to make sure that they meet the objectives of
your project, they work properly on your intended platforms, and they meet the
needs of your client or end user.
4. Delivering: Package and deliver the project to the end user.

Digital Video and Image Compression

Reducing the amount of data needed to reproduce images or video (compression) saves
storage space, increases access speed, and is the only way to achieve digital motion video
on personal computer. Here we shall do a survey on general techniques for video and
image compression, and then describe several standardized compression systems
including JPEG, MPEG.

Evaluating A Compression System

In order to compare video compression systems, one must have ways to evaluate
compression performance. Three keys parameters need to be considered;
ü Amount or degree of compression.
ü Image quality
ü Speed of compression or decompression

In addition, we must also look at the hardware and software required by each
compression method.

How much Compression?

Compression performance is often specified by giving the ratio of input data to output
data or the compression process (the compression ratio).
A much better way to specify the amount of compression is to determine the number of
bits per pixel needed in the compressed bitstream. For example, if we are reproducing a
256 * 240 pixel image from 15,000-byte bitstream, we are compressing to (bits)/ (pixels).
(15,000*8)/(256*240)=2 bits per pixels

How Good Is A Picture?

In talking about picture quality performance of a compression system, it is helpful to
divide the world of compression into two parts, lossless compression and lossy
compression. Lossless compression means that the reproduced image is not changed in
any way by the compression/decompression process; therefore, we do not have to worry
about the picture for lossless system- the output picture will be exactly the same as the
input picture. Lossless compression is possible because we can use more efficient
methods of data transmission than the pixel-by-pixel PCM format that comes from a
digitizer.
On the other hand, lossy compression systems by definition do make some change to the
image-something is different. The trick is making that difference harder for the viewer to
see. Lossy compression systems may introduce any of the digital video artifacts, or they
may even create some unique artifacts of their own. None of these effects is easy to
quantify.

How fast Does It Compress or Decompress?

In many applications, compression and decompression will be done at different times;
they may even be done with totally different systems at different locations. The reason
for this is that there is usually storage or transmission of the image. In between the two

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processes- storage or transmission is why we need compression in the first place.
Therefore, we must evaluate the speeds of compression and decompression separately.
In most cases of storing still images, compression speed is less critical than
decompression speed- since we are compressing the image ahead of time to store it, we
can usually take our time in that process. On the other hand, decompression usually takes
place while the user is waiting for the result, and the speed is much important.

With motion video motion video in real time as it comes from a camera or VCR.

What Hardware and Software Does It Take?

Some amount of compression and decompression can be done in software using standard
PC hardware. Except with very simple algorithms, this approach quickly runs into speed
problems-the process takes too long, and simple algorithms do not provide the best
compression.
Complex algorithms performing tens, hundreds, or even thousands of operations relative
to every input pixel will require proportionally more powerful hardware or they will
become extremely slow. The trade between speed and hardware processing power is an
important choice in designing a compression/decompression system.
One can also choose between general-purpose or special-purpose acceleration hardware.
It is important that the algorithm be standardized before designing hard-wired
compression or decompression equipment.

REDUNDANCY AND VISIBILITY

Redundancy in digital video image occurs when the same information is transmitted more
than once. For example:
In any area of the picture where the same color spans more than one pixel location, there
is redundancy between pixels, since adjacent pixels will have the same value.
When the scene or part of the scene contains predominantly vertically oriented objects,
there is a possibility that two adjacent lines will be partially or completely the same,
giving us redundancy (pixel and line) exit in any image and are called spatial redundancy.

When a scene is stationary or only slightly moving, there is a further possibly of

redundancy between frames of a motion sequence.
Another consideration in image reproduction is that we do not need to display more
information than our viewer will be able to see. The color information can be transmitted
at lower resolution than the luminance or black and white portion of the image.

VIDEO COMPRESSION TECHNIQUES

Simple Compression Techniques
A good example of simple compression is truncation-reducing data through arbitrary
lowering of the bits per pixel. This is done by throwing away some of the least significant
bits for every pixel. If you go too far with truncation, we will begin to see contouring, and
our image will start looking like a cartoon. However, many images can withstand this up
to a point; so, for example, we can usually truncate to 16 bpp with good results on real
image 16bpp is done by assigning color components such as R:G:B 5:5:5 or Y:U:V 6:5:5.

Interpolative Techniques
Interpolative compression at the pixel level consists of transmitting a subset of the pixels
and using interpolation to reconstruct the intervening pixels. The interpolation in that
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case is simply a means for reducing the visibility of pixilation, but the output pixel count
is still equal to the subset. It can be used at the chrominance part of the image while the
luminance part is not interpolated. This is also called color subsampling, and is most
valuable with luminance-chrominance component images (YUV, YIQ etc.).
Interpolation can also be applied between frames of a motion sequence.

Reconstruction with 50% pixels taken Reconstruction with 10% pixels taken

Reconstruction with 10% pixels taken

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Original scenery image

Reconstruction with 15% pixels taken

Predictive Techniques
Anyone who can predict the future has a tremendous advantage-that applies to video
compression as much as it applies to the stock market. In video compression, the future is
the next pixel, or the next frame.
Predictive compression techniques techniques are based on the fact that we can store the
previous item (frame, line, or pixel) and use it to help build the next item.

DPCM
The simplest form of predictive compression operates at the pixel level with a technique
called differential PCM (DPCM). In DPCM, we compare adjacent pixels and then
transmit only the difference between them. Because adjacent pixels often are similar, the
difference values have a high probability of being small and they can safely be
transmitted with fewer bits than it would take to send a whole a new pixel. For example,
if we are compressing 8-bit component pixels, and we use 4 bits for the difference value,
we can maintain the full 8-b dynamic range a long as there is never a change of more than
16 steps between adjacent pixels. In this case, the DPCM step size is equal to one
quantization step of the incoming signal.
In decompression, the difference information is used to modify the previous pixel to get
the new pixel. Normally the difference bits would represent only

50
ADPCM
The distortion from slope overload may be reduced by going to adaptive DPCM
(ADPCM). There are many ways to implement ADPCM, but one common approach is to
adapt by changing the step size represented by the difference bits.
After all the previous discussion, it shouldn’t be a surprise to say that DPCM or ADPCM
are not widely used by themselves for video compression. The artifacts of slope overload
and edge quantization become fatal as we try to achieve more than about 2:1
compression. The techniques however do find their way into more complex algorithms
that combine other more powerful techniques with some form of differential encoding.
(DPCM and ADPCM are widely used for audio compression.)

Other predictive Techniques

Continuing with predictive compression schemes and moving to the next higher level, we
should talk about prediction based on scanning line redundancy. However, line-level
prediction is not often used by itself; rather it tends to be subsumed in the two-
dimensional transform techniques which very neatly combine pixel and line processing in
one package.
Prediction is also a valuable technique at the frame level for motion video compression.

Transform Coding Techniques

A transform is process that converts a bundle of data into an alternate form convenient
for some particular purpose. Transforms are ordinarily designed to be reversible- that is,
there exists the inverse transform which can restore the original data. In video
compression a “bundle of data” is a group of pixels-usually a two-dimensional array of
pixels-usually a two-dimensional array of pixels from an image, for example, 8*8 pixels.
Transformation is done to create an alternate from which can be transmitted or stored
using less data. At decompression time, the inverse transform is run on the data to
reproduce the original pixel information.

More generally, lossy compression can be thought of as an application of transform

coding – in the case of multimedia data, perceptual coding: it transforms the raw data to
a domain that more accurately reflects the information content. For example, rather than
expressing a sound file as the amplitude levels over time, one may express it as the
frequency spectrum over time, which corresponds more accurately to human audio
perception.

While data reduction (compression, be it lossy or lossless) is a main goal of transform

coding, it also allows other goals: one may represent data more accurately for the original
amount of space – for example, in principle, if one starts with an analog or high-
resolution digital master, an MP3 file of a given bitrate (e.g. 320 kbit/s) should provide a
better representation than a raw uncompressed audio in WAV or AIFF file of the same
bitrate. (Uncompressed audio can get lower bitrate only by lowering sampling frequency
and/or sampling resolution.) Further, a transform coding may provide a better domain for
manipulating or otherwise editing the data – for example, equalization of audio is most
naturally expressed in the frequency domain (boost the bass, for instance) rather than in
the raw time domain.

From this point of view, perceptual encoding is not essentially about discarding data, but
rather about a better representation of data.
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Another use is for backward compatibility and graceful degradation: in color television,
encoding color via a luminance-chrominance transform domain (such as YUV) means
that black-and-white sets display the luminance, while ignoring the color information.

The Discrete Cosine Transform

The DCT is performed on a block of horizontally and vertically adjacent pixels-typically
8*8. Thus, 64 pixel values at a time are processed by the transform; the output is 64 new
values, representing amplitudes of two-dimensional spatial frequency components of the
64-pixel block. These are referred to as DCT coefficients.
Since adjacent pixel values tend to be similar or vary slowly from one another, the DCT
processing by forcing most of the signal energy into the lower spatial frequency
components. In most cases, many of the higher-frequency coefficients will have zero or
near-zero values and can be ignored.
A DCT decoder performs the reverse process-spatial frequency coefficients are converted
back to pixel values.

Statistical Coding
Another means of compression is to take advantage of the statistical distribution of the
pixel values of an image or of the statistics of the data created from one of the techniques
discussed above. The usual case for image data is that all possible values are not equally
probable-there will be some kind of no uniform distribution of the value. Another way of
saying that is: some data values will occur more frequents than the other data values. We
can set up a coding technique which codes the more frequently occurring values with
words using fewer bits, and the less frequently occurring values will be coded with longer
words. These results in a reduced number of bits in the final bitstream, and it can be a
lossless technique.

Motion Video Compression Techniques

In the still-image compression techniques that we discussed above, we gave little
consideration to the matter of compression or decompression speed. With still images,
processing only needs to be fast enough that the user does not get bored waiting for
things to happen. However, when one begins to think about motion video compression
systems, the speed issue becomes overwhelming. Processing of a single image in one
second or less is usually satisfactory for stills. However, motion video implies a high
enough frame rate to produce subjectively smooth motion, which for most people is15
frames per second or higher. Full-motion video as used here refers to normal television
frame rates-25 frames per second for European systems, and 30 frames per second for
North America and Japan. These numbers mean that our digital video system must
deliver a new image every 30-40 milliseconds. If system cannot do that, motion will be
slow or jerky, and the system will quickly be judged unacceptable.
Fortunately, motion video offers its own opportunities to achieve additional compression.
There is the redundancy between adjacent frames-a motion video compression system
can (or must) exploit that redundancy. Techniques dealing with this are prediction and
interpolation or a special technique called motion compensation.

Another concept that comes into play with motion video systems is the idea of symmetry
between compression and decompression. a symmetric compression/decompression
system will use the same hardware for both compression and decompression and perform
both processes at roughly the same speed. Such a system will require hardware that is too

52
expensive for a single-user system, or else it will have to sacrifice picture quality in favor
of lower-cost hardware.

THE JPEG IMAGE COMPRESSION STANDAD

JPEG-Objectives
JPEG undertook to develop a single standard applicable to the still-imaging needs of a
wide range of applications in all the different industries that might use digital continuous-
tone imaging. The scope of this is best seen by listing the objectives in detail:
1. To be at or near the state of the art for degree of compression versus image
quality.
2. To be parametarizable so that the user can select the desired compression versus
quality tradeoff.
3. To be applicable to practically any kind of source of image, without regard to
dimensions, image content, aspect ratio, etc.
4. To have computational requirements that are reasonable for both hardware or
software implementation, and
5. To support four different modes of operation:
a. Sequential encoding, where each image is encoded in the same order that
it was scanned;
b. Progressive encoding, where the image is encoded in multiple passes so
that a coarse image is presented rapidly, followed by repeated images
showing greater and greater detail;
c. Lossless encoding, where the image is encoded at multiple resolutions;
d. Hierarchical encoding, where the image is encoded at multiple resolutions.

THE MPEG MOTION VIDEO COMPRESSION STANDARD

Digital motion video can be accomplished with the JPEG still-image standard if you
have fast enough hardware to process30 images per second. However, the maximum
compression potential cannot be achieved because the redundancy between frames is not
being exploited. Furthermore, there are many other things to be considered in
compressing and decompressing motion video as indicated in the objectives below.

Objectives
As with the JPEG standard is intended to be generic, meaning that it will support the
needs of many applications. As such, it can be considered a motion video compression
toolkit, from which a user selects the particular features that suits his or her application.
More specific objectives are:
1. The standard will deliver acceptable video quality at compressed data rates
between 1.0 and 1.5Mbps.
2. It will support either symmetric or asymmetric compress/decompress applications
3. When compression takes it into account, random-access playback is possible to
any specified degree.
4. Similarly, when compression take4s it into account, fast-forward, fast-reverse, or
normal reverse playback modes can be made available in addition to normal
(playback).
5. Audio/video synchronization will be maintained.
6. Catastrophic behavior in the presence of data errors should be avoidable.
7. When it is required, compression-decompression delay can be controlled.
8. Editability should be available when required by the application.

53
 9. There should be sufficient format flexibility to support playing o video in
Windows.
The processing requirements should not be preclude the development of low-cost
chipsets which are capable of encoding in real time.

MULTIMEDIA TOOLS
Introduction
Multimedia presentations range from simple slide shows to very sophisticated and
professional programs. Depending on the nature and complexity of the presentation, the
tools will also vary.

PAINT & DRAWN APPLICATIOS

There are two basic forms of computer graphics:
ü Bitmaps and
ü Vector graphics

Bitmaps Images
Bitmap images are also known as matrix of pixels with different colors. Bitmap images
are defined by their dimensions in pixels as well as by the number of colors they
represent e.g a 640 * 480 image contains 640 pixels horizontally and 480 pixels
vertically.
Using 24-bit color, each pixel can be set to any of the 16 million colors.
To edit or modify these bitmap images you use a paint program.
Bitmap images suffer from following limitations:-
v They must be printed or displayed at a size determined by the number of pixels in
the image.
v Printing or displaying one at any other size can create unwanted patterns in the
image, thus distorting it.
v Bitmap images have very large file sizes that are determined by the image’s
dimensions in pixels and colors used. To create this problem, some graphic
formats such as GIF and JPEG store the images in compressed formats.

Vector Graphics
Vector graphics are really just a set of graphical objects such as lines, rectangles, ellipses,
arcs, or curves, called primitives that the program stores as numerical coordinates and
mathematical formulas specifying their shape and position in the image.
Draw programs, also called vector graphics programs, are a format widely used in CAD
programs to create detailed engineering and design drawings that have become popular in
multimedia 3D animation.

Advantages of vector graphics over paint programs

ü Precise control over lines and colors
ü Ability to skew and rotate objects to see them from different angles or add
perspective.
ü Ability to scale objects to any size in order to fit the available space.
ü Vector graphics always print at the best resolution of the printer no matter what
size you make them.
ü Color blends and shading can be easily changed.

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Input device
Device for entering information into a computer. Input devices include keyboards,
joysticks, mice, light pens, touch-sensitive screens, scanners, graphics tablets, speech-
recognition devices, and vision systems. A hardware device that sends information into
the CPU. Without any input devices a computer would simply be a display device and not
allow users to interact with it, much like a TV. Below is a listing of different types of
computer input devices.

Digital camera Joystick

•
• Keyboard Microphone
• Mouse Scanner
• Web Cam Magnetic card
• Track ball Voice recognition
• Optical character recognition Infra-red remote

Digital camera

A type of camera that stores the pictures or video it takes in electronic format instead of
to film. There are several features that make digital cameras a popular choice when
compared to film cameras. First, the feature often enjoyed the most is the LCD display on
the digital camera. This display allows users to view photos or video after the picture or
video has been taken, which means if you take a picture and don't like the results, you can
delete it; or if you do like the picture, you can easily show it to other people. Another nice
feature with digital cameras is the ability to take dozens, sometimes hundreds of different
pictures. To the right is a picture of the Casio QV-R62, a 6.0 Mega Pixel digital camera
used to help illustrate what a digital camera may look like.

Digital cameras have quickly become the camera solution for most users today as the
quality of picture they take has greatly improved and as the price has decreased. Many
users however are hesitant in buying a digital camera because of the inability of getting
their pictures developed. However, there are several solutions in getting your digital
pictures developed. For example, there are numerous Internet companies capable of
developing your pictures and send you your pictures in the mail. In addition, many of the
places that develop your standard cameras film now have the ability to develop digital
pictures if you bring them your camera, memory stick, and/or pictures on CD.

55
Joystick

A peripheral input device that looks similar to a control device you would find on an
arcade game at your local arcades. A computer joystick allows an individual to easily
navigate an object in a game such as navigating a plane in a flight simulator. The image
to the right of this text is an image of the Logitech Freedom 2.4 joystick and is an
example of what you would expect most computer joysticks to look like.
Keyboard

Keyboards, the most frequently used input devices, are used to enter instructions and data
via keys. There are many variations on the layout and labelling of keys. Extra numeric
keys may be added, as may special-purpose function keys, whose effects can be defined
by programs in the computer.
Today most users use the QWERTY style keyboards. Below is a graphic illustration of
where each of the keys are
on a U.S. QWERTY style
keyboard.

56
Microphone

Sometimes abbreviated as mic, a microphone is a hardware peripheral that allows

computer users to input audio into their computers. To the right is a visual example of a
USB headset from Logitech with a microphone. A popular solution for computer gaming.

Mouse

An input device that allows an individual to control a mouse pointer in a graphical user
interface (GUI). Utilizing a mouse a user has the ability to perform various functions
such as opening a program or file and does not require the user to memorize commands,
like those used in a text-based environment such as MS-DOS. To the right is a picture of
a Microsoft IntelliMouse and is an example of what a computer mouse may look like.

Optical scanner
Hardware input device that allows a user to take an image and/or text and convert it into a
digital file, allowing the computer to read and/or display the scanned object. A scanner is
commonly connected to a computer USB, Firewire, Parallel or SCSI port.
Webcam

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A camera connected to a computer or server that allows anyone connected to the Internet
to view still pictures or motion video of a user. The majority of webcam web sites are still
pictures that are frequently refreshed every few seconds, minutes, hours, or days.
However, there are some sites and personal pages that can supply streaming video for
users with broadband. The image to the right is a picture of the Logitech QuickCam
Express and an example of what a webcam may look like. Today, most webcams are
connected to the USB or Firewire port on a computer.

Trackball

Type of input device that looks like an upside-down mouse. The onscreen pointer is
moved by the trackball with a thumb or finger. A trackball requires less arm and wrist
motion that a regular mouse takes. To the right is a picture of the Logitech Cordless
Trackman Optical and an example of a trackball mouse.

Magnetic card

Rectangular object that contains either a magnetic strip on the outside or a magnetic
object within the card that contains data. A magnetic card may contain information about

58
an individual such as available credit on a credit card, or contain information about an
employee that allows that employee into certain parts of a building.

Infra-red Remote

Infrared was discovered in the early 1800's by Sir William Hershel. He discovered upon
moving a thermometer across the spectrum of colors that the heat would increase towards
red. As he continued to move the thermometer past the red the heating continued to rise.
This area is what we call Infrared, or also known as "Below Red". The Infrared port
today or also commonly refereed to as the IRDA (Infrared Data Association) is a port
much like what you would find on your TV/VCR remote. This port allows two computers
or a computer and a device to communicate amongst each other without the use of wires.

Voice recognition

Ability of a computer, computer software program, or hardware device to decode the

human voice into digitized speech that can be interpreted by the computer or hardware
device. Voice recognition is commonly used to operate a device, perform commands, or
write without having to operate a keyboard, mouse, or press any buttons. For example, a
user could say "open Internet" and the computer would open an Internet browser and
allow that user to browse the Internet.

Optical Character Recognition

Short for Optical Character Recognition or Optical Character Reader, OCR is the process
where images of letters can be entered into the computer as data using a scanner or other
hardware device. OCR is far from perfect, but is currently the best method of digitizing
typed pages of text. Some computer fax applications also use OCR to transform incoming
faxes from graphics files into word processing documents. Some examples of how an
OCR may be used would be a company that has hard copies of manuals or other company
information and wanting to convert them into data that can be easily accessed and stored.
Another example is companies and libraries taking copies of books, magazines, or other
old printed material and using an OCR to scan it into computers.

Graphics Tablet

( By mr. Mochoge Cleo)

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The graphics tablet is an input device in which a stylus or cursor is moved, by hand, over
a flat surface. The computer can keep track of the position of the stylus, enabling the
operator to input drawings or diagrams into the computer.

Light pens

Light pens resemble ordinary pens and are used to indicate locations on a computer
screen. With certain computer-aided design (CAD) programs, the light pen can be used to
instruct the computer to change the shape, size, position, and colors of sections of a
screen image.

OUTPUT DEVICES

An output device is any piece of computer hardware equipment used to communicate the
results of data processing carried out by an information processing system (such as a
computer) to the outside world.

Inputs are the signals or data sent to the system, and outputs are the signals or data sent
by the system to the outside.
The most common output devices are monitors and speakers
A monitor or display (sometimes called a visual display unit) is a piece of electrical
equipment which displays images generated by devices such as computers, without
producing a permanent record. The monitor comprises the actual display device,
circuitry, and an enclosure. The display device in modern monitors is typically a thin film
transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD), while older monitors use a cathode ray tube
(CRT).

PRINTERS

In computing, a printer is a peripheral which produces a hard copy (permanent human-

readable text and/or graphics) of documents stored in electronic form, usually on physical
print media such as paper or transparencies. Many printers are primarily used as local
peripherals, and are attached by a printer cable or, in most newer printers, a USB cable to
a computer which serves as a document source. Some printers, commonly known as
network printers, have built-in network interfaces (typically wireless or Ethernet), and
can serve as a hardcopy device for any user on the network. Individual printers are often
designed to support both local and network connected users at the same time.

In addition, a few modern printers can directly interface to electronic media such as
memory sticks or memory cards, or to image capture devices such as digital cameras,
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scanners; some printers are combined with a scanners and/or fax machines in a single
unit, and can function as photocopiers. Printers that include non-printing features are
sometimes called Multifunction Printers (MFP), Multi-Function Devices (MFD), or All-
In-One (AIO) printers. Most MFPs include printing, scanning, and copying among their
features. A Virtual printer is a piece of computer software whose user interface and API
resemble that of a printer driver, but which is not connected with a physical computer
printer.

Printers are designed for low-volume, short-turnaround print jobs; requiring virtually no
setup time to achieve a hard copy of a given document. However, printers are generally
slow devices (30 pages per minute is considered fast; and many inexpensive consumer
printers are far slower than that), and the cost per page is actually relatively high. The
printing press remains the machine of choice for high-volume, professional publishing..
The world's first computer printer was a 19th century mechanically driven apparatus
invented by Charles Babbage for his Difference Engine.

SPEAKERS
A loudspeaker, speaker, or speaker system is an electro acoustical transducer that
converts an electrical signal to sound
The part of a sound system that produces the actual sound that a person hears. The sound
is produced by the vibration of a paper or synthetic cone by an electrical voltage in a wire
coil.

PROJECTORS

• Video projector, a device that projects a video signal from computer, home theater
system etc.
• Movie projector, a device that projects moving pictures from a filmstrip
• Slide projector, a device that projects a still image with a transparent base
• Overhead projector, a device that projects a transparent image
• Opaque projector, a predecessor to the overhead projector

A video projector takes a video signal and projects the corresponding image on a
projection screen using a lens system. All video projectors use a very bright light to
project the image, and most modern ones can correct any curves, blurriness, and other
inconsistencies through manual settings. Video projectors are widely used for conference
room presentations, classroom training, home theatre and live events applications.
Projectors are widely used in many schools and other educational settings, connected to
an interactive white board to interactively teach pupils

MODEMS
Modem (from modulator-demodulator) is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal
to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the
transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and
decoded to reproduce the original digital data. Modems can be used over any means of
transmitting analog signals, from driven diodes to radio.

A cable modem is a type of modem that provides bi-directional data communication via
radio frequency channels on a cable television (CATV) infrastructure. Cable modems are
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primarily used to deliver broadband Internet access in the form of cable Internet, taking
advantage of the high bandwidth of a cable television network. They are commonly
deployed in Australia, Europe, and North and South America. In the USA alone there
were 22.5 million cable modem users during the first quarter of 2005, up from 17.4
million in the first quarter of 2004.

ISDN
Integrated Services Digital Network is a telephone system network. Prior to the ISDN,
the phone system was viewed as a way to transport voice, with some special services
available for data. The key feature of the ISDN is that it integrates speech and data on the
same lines, adding features that were not available in the classic telephone system. There
are several kinds of access interfaces to the ISDN defined: Basic Rate Interface (BRI),
Primary Rate Interface (PRI) and Broadband-ISDN (B-ISDN).

ISDN is a circuit-switched telephone network system, that also provides access to packet
switched networks, designed to allow digital transmission of voice and data over ordinary
telephone copper wires, resulting in better voice quality than an analog phone. It offers
circuit-switched connections (for either voice or data), and packet-switched connections
(for data), in increments of 64 kbit/s. Another major market application is Internet access,
where ISDN typically provides a maximum of 128 kbit/s in both upstream and
downstream directions (which can be considered to be broadband speed, since it exceeds
the narrowband speeds of standard analog 56k telephone lines).

DSL
DSL digital subscriber line is a family of technologies that provides digital data
transmission over the wires of a local telephone network. DSL can be used at the same
time and on the same telephone line with regular telephone, as it uses high frequency
bands, while regular telephone uses low frequency

When you connect to the Internet, you might connect through a regular modem, through a
local-area network connection in your office, through a cable modem or through a digital
subscriber line (DSL) connection. DSL is a very high-speed connection that uses the
same wires as a regular telephone line.

Here are some advantages of DSL:

• You can leave your Internet connection open and still use the phone line for voice
calls.
• The speed is much higher than a regular modem
• DSL doesn't necessarily require new wiring; it can use the phone line you already
have.
• The company that offers DSL will usually provide the modem as part of the
installation.
But there are disadvantages:
• A DSL connection works better when you are closer to the provider's central
office. The farther away you get from the central office, the weaker the signal
becomes.
• The connection is faster for receiving data than it is for sending data over the
Internet.
• The service is not available everywhere.
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CABLE MODEMS
A cable modem is a type of modem that provides bi-directional data communication via
radio frequency channels on a cable television (CATV) infrastructure. Cable modems are
primarily used to deliver broadband Internet access in the form of cable Internet, taking
advantage of the high bandwidth of a cable television network.

AMPLIFIERS
Generally, an amplifier or simply amp, is any device that changes, usually increases, the
amplitude of a signal. The "signal" is usually voltage or current. It simply produces a
more powerful version of the audio signal

In popular use, the term usually refers to an electronic amplifier, often as in audio
applications to operate a loudspeaker that is being used in a PA system to make the
human voice louder or play recorded music. Amplifiers may be classified by the input
(source) they are designed to amplify (such as a guitar amplifier to perform with an
electric guitar), or named for the device they are intended to drive (such as a headphone
amplifier), or by the frequency range of the signals (Audio, IF, RF and VHF amplifiers
for example), or grouped by whether they invert the signal (inverting amplifiers and non-
inverting amplifiers), or by the types of device used in the amplification (valve or tube
amplifiers, FET amplifiers, etc.).

MEMORY STORAGE DEVICES USED IN MULTIMEDIA

Memory and Storage Devices
RAM
ROM
Floppy and Hard Disks
Zip, Jaz and Optical Storage Devices
Digital Versatile Disk (DVD)
CD-ROM Players
CD-Recorders

INTRODUCTION
Memory is defined as devices/technology used to store computer data and information
either permanently or temporarily.
Memory in this case refers to the space required on a floppy disk, hard disk or CD-rom
not the RAM.
To estimate the memory requirements of multimedia projects one must have a sense of
the projects content and scope. Features of multimedia: color, text, sound bites, video
clips and programming code used require large amounts of disk space and memory for
storage, the more the elements the more the memory required.
When making multimedia one has to allocate memory for storing and archiving working
files used during production, original audio and video clips, edited pieces and final
mixed pieces, production paperwork and correspondence and backup of the project and a
second backup in a different location.
It should also be noted that hardware requirements for production are more demanding
than those of consumption, sound, video and images need large storage space than the
finished product.

Random Access Memory (RAM)

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RAM refers to the main memory of the computer that contains instructions required
immediately by the CPU. RAM is volatile, that is, its contents remain stable as long as
power is available.
If faced with financial constrains one can produce multimedia project on a slower or
limited memory computer.
However it is very frustrating to face memory (RAM) shortages time after time when
trying to keep multiple applications and files open simultaneously or to wait the extra
seconds in editing multimedia material when working on a slow processor.
Though processor speed is beneficial in increasing efficiency of a computer, if not
accompanied by sufficient RAM it is ineffective and a waste of resources (ie processor
cycles are wasted as it swaps needed portions of program code in and out of memory.)
In some cases increasing RAM shows more improvement than upgrading of processor.

Read Only Memory (ROM)

ROM is a type of main memory that is not volatile, does not lose memory when switched
off.
ROM is typically used to hold small BIOS program that boots the computer and in
printers to hold built-in fonts.
Programmable ROMs (PROMs) allow changes to be made that are not forgotten.
Optical Read Only Memory (OROM) is provided in proprietary data cards using
holographic storage. Typically OROMs offer 128MB of storage.

FLOPPY DISKS AND HARD DISKS

Floppy disks and Hard disks are storage for binary data ie data easily read by the
computer.

Ample storage for production of multimedia can be provided by large capacity hard
disks. Manufacturers are regularly increasing the size of hard disks or have several used
together to increase performance.
Speed of data transfer to and from large disk is a serious limiting factor especially for
digital video where transfer rates.
However there are interfaces developed that support higher rates e.g. FireWire 400and
FireWire 800 that offer speeds of upto 400MB and 800MB respectively. When a high
capacity disk is connected to FireWire to a dedicated computer it provides adequate
performance for multimedia production but if it is to share data between workstations
using a central server and a LAN, higher performance is required.
Hard disks contain much more than floppy disks and operate at greater data transfer rates.
Floppy disk is made of flexible mylar plastic coated in a layer of special magnetic
sensitive material. While a hard disk is a stack of hard metal platters with magnetically
sensitive material, with series of recording heads or sensors that however a hairbreadth
above the fast-spining surface, magnetizing spots along formatted tracks using
technology similar to that of floppies, audio and video tape recording.
Hard disks are the most common mass-storage device used on computers and with
change in technology makers of hard disks are challenged to build smaller profile, larger-
capacity, faster and less-expensive hard disks, while floppy disks are no longer “mass
storage devices and will soon be obsolete.

ZIP, JAZ, SYQUEST AND OPTICAL STORAGE DEVICES

Zip, Jaz and SyQuest are examples of removable storage media.
SyQuest
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For years SyQuest 44MB removable cartridges were the most widely used portable
medium among multimedia developers and professionals.
Zip
Iomega’s inexpensive Zip drives with their inexpensive 100MB, 250MB and 750MB
catridges significantly penetrated the market. Zip cartridges are built on floppy disk
technology.
Jaz
Developed by Iomega, these are cartridges built on hard disk technology , provided one
or two gigabytes of removable storage media and have fast enough transfer rates for
multimedia development.

Magneto Optical (MO) Drives

These use high-power laser to heat tiny spots on the metal oxide coating of the disk.
While the spot is hot a magnet aligns the oxide to provide a 0 or 1 (on or off) orientation.
MO Drives are rewritable technology as the spots can be repeatedly heated and aligned
and is not affected by stray magnetism (it needs both heat and magnetism to make
changes) and therefore suitable for archiving data.
However, transfer rate is slower as compared to Zip, Jaz and SyQuest technologies.
One of the most popular formats uses a 128MB- capacity disk-about the size of a 3.5”
floppy, but larger format magnetic-optical drives with 5.25” cartridges offering 650MB-
1.3GB are available.

Digital Versatile Disc (DVD)

Developed in 1995, by nine major electronic companies that agreed to promote a new
optical disk technology for the distribution of multimedia and full-length movies. The
nine companies include: Toshiba, Matsushita, Sony, Philips, Time Warner, Pioneer, JVC,
Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric.

Features of DVD are as follows

DVD Feature DVD specification

Disc diameter 120mm (5 inches)
Disc Thickness 1.2mm
Memory Capacity 4.7gigsbytes/single side
Track pitch 0.74 micrometer
Wave length of laser diode 650 /635 nanometer
Numerical aperture (NA) 0.6
Error correction RS-PC (Reed Solomon Product Code)
Signal Modulation 8-16
Data Transfer Rate Variable speed data transfer at and average
rate of 4.69 Mbps for image and sound.
Image compression MPEG digital compression
Audio Dolby AC-3(5.1 ch),LPCM for MPEG
audio, LPCM for PAL/SECAM (a
maximum of 8 audio channels and 32
substitute channels can be stored)
Running time (movies) 1333 minutes a side (at an average data rate
of 4.69 Mbps for image and sound
including three audio channels and four
subtitle channels)
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File management Structure Micro UDF and ISO 9660

Capabilities of DVD include:

• Gigabyte storage capacity
• Full-motion video (MPEG2) and high-quality audio in surround sound.
This has risen the standards for multimedia developers.
There are three types of DVDs
1. DVD –Read write
2. DVD video
3. DVD ROM
These types reflect marketing channels not the technology.
With Dolby AC-3 Digital Surround Sound as part of the specification, six discrete audio
channels can be programmed for digital surround sound and with a separate subwoofer
channel; developers can program the low-frequency doom and gloom music popular with
Hollywood.
DVD also supports DOLBY Pro-Logic Surround Sound, standard stereo and mono audio.
There are 3 formats for manufacturing and writing DVDs namely:
• DVD-R/RW
• DVD+R/RW
• DVD-RAM
Dual Layer recording allows DVD-R and DVD+R to store more data, upto 8GB per disc
in comparison to 4.7GBs for single-layer discs. DVD-RW was developed for the DVD
Forum by the Pioneer Corporation, while DVD+R DL (dual layer) by Sony for
DVD+RW Alliance.
NB: The DVD-R specifications were released after the first generation DVD-Video
specifications, therefore some older DVD players may not be able to play discs burned to
newer DVD-R specifications.

FLASH OR THUMBDRIVES
These technologies are about the size of a thin cigarette lighter and can be integrated with
USB of FireWire interfaces to store about 8MB to several GB of data.
Advantages
• Available in a variety of colors
• More reliable than disk drives because they have fewer movable parts
• Are extremely portable
• It is trendy
• Convenient to use.

Make up of flash drives: consist of a small printed circuit mother board encased in sturdy
metal or plastic casing with USB connector covered with a cap.

Compact Disc Read Only Memory (CD-ROM) Players

A CD is an optical laser disc designed to enhance the reproduction of recorded music.
CD-ROM player are an integral part of multimedia development workstation and are an
important delivery vehicle for large, mass produced projects.
A wide variety of developer utilities, graphics, backgrounds, stock photography and
sounds, application games and educational software are available only in this format.

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CD-ROM players have typically been very slow and transmit data but developments have
led to increased speed. Where we have 24X, 48x and 56x (spin rate) drives designed for
computer use.
24X spin rates imply that the CD spins 24 times faster than the original CD standard.

CD Recorders
With a compact disc recorder, one can make their own CD using special CD-Recordable
blank optical discs to create a CD in most formats of CD-ROM and CD- Audio.
CD-R discs are made from differently than normal CDs but can play in any CD-Audio or
CD-ROM player. They are write-once, enhanced CDs that make excellent high-capacity
file archives and are used extensively by multimedia developers for pre-mastering and
testing CD-ROM projects and titles.
They are inexpensive and used for short-run distribution of finished multimedia projects.

CD-RW
A CD-RW recorder can write 700MB of data to a CD-RW disc about 1000times.
CD-RW capabilities
• Able to totally erase a disc
CD-RW act similar to CD-Rs and are subject to same restrictions.
Writing sessions must be closed before they can read a CD-ROM drive or players and
though they can be extended, in most cases they cannot be overwritten. To use CD-RW,
you must first blank it.

TEXT IN MULTIMEDIA.
Definition of multimedia
Multimedia is any combination of text, art, sound and animation delivered by computer
or other electronic or digitally manipulated means.
Multimedia is the field concern with the computer-controlled integration of text,
graphics, still and moving images, animation and sound can be represented, stored,
transmitted and processed digitally.
Text
Text is the most widely used and flexible means of presenting information on screen and
conveying ideas.
Imagine designing a project that used no text at all. Its contents could not be at all
complex, and you will need to use many pictures and symbols to training your audience
how to navigate through project. Voice and sound could guide the audience, but users
would quickly tire of this. Greater efforts are required to pay attention to spoken words
than to browse text with the eye.
Text has been historically the major form of interaction between computers and
humans. It is also, together with recorded broadcasts and movies, the prime form of
asynchronous communication (communication deferred in time) between humans
(through books, newspapers, letters and more recently through electronic mail)
In multimedia, text is used for titles and headlines, for menus, for navigation and for
content.

DESIGNING WITH TEXT

Computer screens provide a very small workspace for developing complex ideas. From a
design perspective, the choice of font size and the number of headings you place on a
particular screen must be related both to the complexity of your message and to its venue.

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 If your messages are part of an interactive project or web site where you know the user
is seeking information, you can pack a great deal of text information onto the screen .
Seekers want dense material and while they travel along your navigational path-ways,
they will scroll through relevant text and study the details. Too little text on a screen
requires annoying page turns and unnecessary mouse clicks and waits; too much text can
make the screen seem overcrowded and unpleasant.
If you are creating presentation slides for public-speaking support, the text will be
keyed to a live presentation where the text accents the main message. In this case, use
bulleted points in large fonts and few words with lots of space.

CHOOSING TEXT FONTS

Picking the fonts to use in your multimedia presentation may be difficult from design
standpoint. The following suggestions help in designing:
• For small type, use the most legible font available. Decorative fonts that cannot
help are useless.
• Use as few as possible different fonts as possible in same page. Using too many
fonts on the same page is called ransom- note typography.
• In text blocks, adjust the leading for the most pleasing line spacing. Lines too
tightly packed are different to read.
• Vary the size of a font in proportion to the importance of the message you are
delivering.
• In large-size headlines, adjust the spacing between letters so that the spacing feels
right.
• To make your type stand out or be more legible, explore the effects of different
colors and of placing the text on various backgrounds.
• Use anti-aliased text where you want a gentle and blended look for titles and
headlines. Anti-aliasing blends the colors along the edges of the letters to create a
soft transition between the letters and its background.
• Try drop caps and initial caps to accent your words. Most word processors and
text editors will let you create drop caps and small caps in your text.
• If you are using centered type in a text block, keep the number of lines to a
minimum.
• For attention-grabbing results with single words or short phrases, try graphically
altering and distorting your text and delivering the results as an image.
• Pick the fonts that seem right to you for getting your message across.
• Use meaningful words or phases for links and menu items.

MENU FOR NAVIGATION

An interactive multimedia project or web site typically consist of body of information
through which a user navigates by pressing a key, clicking a mouse or pressing a touch
screen.. The simplest menus consist of text lists of topics. Users choose a topic, click it
and go there. Sometimes menu items are surrounded by boxes or made to look like push
buttons.
Text is helpful to users to provide perpetual cues about their location within the body of
content. When users must click up and down through many layers of menus to reach their
goal, they may not get lost, but they may feel bad.

BUTTONS FOR INTERACTION

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In multimedia, buttons are the objects, such as blocks of text or photographs that make
things happen when they are clicked. They were invented for the purpose of pushed with
cursor, mouse, key and finger and to manifest properties such as highlighting or other
visual or sound effects to indicate that you hit the target. On the web, text and graphic art
may be buttons.

The automatic button-making tools supplied with multimedia and HTML page authoring
systems are useful, but in creating the text for you they offer little opportunity to change
the look of the text.

FIELDS FOR READING

Experiments have shown that reading text on a computer screen is slower and more
difficult that reading the same text in hard-copy or book form. Reading hard copy is more
comfortable.
Unless the very purpose of your multimedia project or web site is to display large blocks
of text, present to the user only a few paragraphs of text per page. Whole paragraphs
should be displayed and breaks where users must go back and forth between pages to
read an entire paragraph should be avoided.

HTML DOCUMENTS
The standard document format used for pages on the web is called Hypertext Markup
Language (HTML).in an HTML document; you can specify typefaces, sizes, colors and
other properties by “marking up” the text in the document with tags. for example if you
want bold, <b>.
The neat paragraphs, indented lists and formats for text documents for which HTML
was originally intended are evolving into multimedia documents, not text documents. As
features and tags and plug-ins and special scripts ate tacked onto or embedded into
HTML to satisfy the demand for multimedia interfaces, at some point HTML will need to
be redesigned as a multimedia delivery tool, not just a text display tool with assorted
attachments.

SYMBOLS AND ICONS

Symbols are concentrated text in the form of stand-alone graphic constructs. Symbols
convey meaningful messages. Icons are symbolic representations of objects and
processes common to the graphical user interface of many computer operating systems.
They are easily recalled and remembered by viewers.
With multimedia, you have the power to blend both text and icons to enhance the
overall impact and value of your message. Word meaning are shared by millions of
people but the special symbols you design for a multimedia project are not; these symbols
must be learned before they can be useful message carriers. Some symbols are more
widely used and understood than others. Learning a system of symbols can be difficult.

ANIMATING TEXT
There are plenty ways to retain a viewer’s attention when displaying text. For example,
you can animate bulleted text and have it look nice on the screen. For speakers,
highlighting the important text works with as a pointing device. When there are several
points to be made, you can arrange keywords and flash them past the viewer in a timed
automated sequence.

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Although text is an excellent device for delivering information, text can often be too slow
at getting the message across. If you only have 3 seconds to grab someone's attention as
they walk past your display, text is not going to get the job done.

Advantages of text in multimedia

1. They deliver the most widely understood meaning to the greatest number of
people accurately and detailed. Graphics would be interpreted differently by
people.
2. Text is helpful to users to provide perpetual cues about location within the body
content. The user can navigate through pages using menus.
3. It attracts the attention of the audience. Greater effort is required to pay attention
to spoken words than to browse text with the eye. This could quickly tire of the
audience.
4. Text enables millions of documents to be displayed on the web. This gives the
person browsing enough choices to choose what to read.

Disadvantages of text in multimedia

1. Experiments have shown that reading text on a computer screen is slower and
more difficult that reading the same text in hard-copy or book form. Reading hard
copy is more comfortable.
2. Design issues: As bandwidth improves and more multimedia elements are
successfully embedded within these documents, the developers will face design
issues.

TYPES OF TEXT
There are three types of text that are used to produce pages of documents:-
(a) Unformatted text
(b) Formatted text
(c) Hypertext

FORMATTED TEXT
Formatted text, also referred as rich text, enables pages and complete documents to be
created which comprise of strings of characters of different styles, size and shape with
tables, graphics and images inserted at appropriate points.
An example of formatted text is that produced by most processing packages. It’s also
used extensively in the publishing sector for the preparation of papers, books, magazines
and journals. It enables documents to be created that consist of characters of different
styles and of variable size and shape, each of which can be plain, bold or italicized.
A variety of documents formatting options are supported to enable an author to structure
a document into chapters, sections and paragraphs each with tables, graphics and pictures
inserted at appropriate points. To achieve each of these features, the author of the
document enters a specific command which, typically result in a defined format-control
character sequence- normally a reserved format- control character- being inserted at the
beginning of the particular character string, table, graphic or picture.
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UNFORMATTED TEXT
This is also known as plaintext and it enables pages to be created which comprise strings
of fixed-sized characters from a limited character set. The appearance of text may be the
same as its appearance on printed pages.
The size of the characters is fixed and only one form and style is available.
HYPERTEXT
Hypertext is a type of formatted text that enables a related set of documents- normally
referred to as pages- to be created which have defined linkage points- referred to as
hyperlinks between each other. For example, most universities describe their structure
and courses and support services they offer, in booklet known as prospectus. Like most
such booklets, this is organized in hierarchical way and in order for a reader to find out
information about a particular course; the user would start at the index and use this to
access details about the university. In a similar way, hypertext can be used to create an
electronic version of such document. It enables a person
to browse through its contents in a user-friendly way.

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