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Macromedia Web WorldGreg Bumpus August 3, 2000 — Learnframe, Sandy |
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Meeting Summary
NUCHI offers a hearty thanks to Greg Bumpus and Rob Perry from Novell for presenting to the membership: A Report on the Macromedia Conference, emphasizing Dreamweaver v.3 and Flash technology. Thanks also to Uhl Albert and Learnframe for hosting our mid-Summer meeting.
The Macromedia Conference web site details the June, 2000 event. Greg and Rob educated and informed members and guests from Novell, Iomega, EURO RSCG DSW, 7i Design, and Financial Fusion. Both our presenters emphasized how Dreamweaver v.3 (DW3) and Flash related to Human Factors and HCI. These were terrific, in-depth presentations covering both technical and design related issues.
Now to the highlights . . .
Greg noted that DW3 comes from the "Mac" (not Windows) world of floating palettes, and the program itself is actually written in HTML and JavaScript, with the option for an extended architecture. For those trying their hand at WYSIWYG web page design, the DW3 Exchange provides multiple "extended architecture" samples, offering the power of DW3 beyond the immediate code. To demonstrate, Greg created an extensible wire frame — helpful for quick prototyping.
Greg also praised the efforts of Kelly Goto, a conference presenter who evangelized the importance of usability testing at all stages of development. Kelly's handout, distributed by Greg to the group, includes a sample client survey.
Rob then gave us the latest on Flash (hey, it's not just eye candy anymore!) and the new Scalable Vector Graphics format (just say "SVG"). Flash has been used successfully for splash screens and cartoons . . . but . . . it offers a lot more, including a potential interface tool. Rob's handouts and screen shots detailed the scalable interactivity that comes with Flash (e.g., a map of the University of Michigan campus was shown, where different building regions could be zoomed in/out). Rob noted that you can define objects within objects (stick with us here . . . ) which, remarkably, yields very small files sizes. Lean is in — fat is out!
FYI: QuickTime supports Flash, but, well, Flash won't work with text readers.
Rob then showed us, as an example, the Ultimate ATM, a Flash-based banking user interface. So . . . as market penetration reaches an all time high for the Flash reader (in a way, kind of like the Acrobat reader download), Rob challenged us to wonder . . . "Do we really need to continue to be fearful of building sites that require plug-ins?" The votes are still being counted . . .
Finally, Rob brought up us to date on SVG (see Adobe/SVG). SVG is a subset of XML, a mark-up language which describes the graphical elements of a script. Make sense?! Like XML, used correctly, SVG holds significant potential for simplifying and enhancing the lives of our end-users.
The evening included refreshments (bagels, fruit, and more, courtesy of Grant Skousen — thanks Grant!), and a ton of collegial "meeting room and parking lot" chat. Here's to yet another informative and exciting NUCHI presentation.
Andy Schechterman, PhD
Secretary, NUCHI