ANNOUNCEMENT> Tune In the Net Workshop

[Thomas P. Copley]

TUNE IN THE NET WORKSHOP: GLOBAL REACH FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

"Tune In the Net Workshop: Global Reach for the 21st Century" is an
eight week distance learning workshop focusing on tools for Internet
interactivity and conducted via e-mail and the World Wide Web (WWW). The
workshop will introduce the beginner to the basic concepts of
interactivity, and assist the more experienced user in making his or her
Web pages into a stand-out interactive site.

BACKGROUND

Interactivity is the ability of the Internet user to alter certain
aspects of his or her environment, resulting in useful functionality. It
is the method of control and contingent response between user and
medium. Some popular terms to describe interactive systems include
multimedia, hypermedia, infotainment and edutainment. Interactivity can
be as simple as an animation or as complex as a multi-user game played
over the Internet. However, most users will find practical interactive
applications more useful - applications such as hooking up HTML forms to
virtual shopping cart or on-line sales catalog scripts in order to
enhance a commercial site.  Interactivity provides many ways to obtain
input from users, including the ability to make regions of an image
active so that a click on a "hot spot" will activate a link to another
Web page or initiate some other action.  Users may also interact with
the Web page itself. Some examples of this include a self-assessment
quiz for a Web course, a price comparison calculator for a commercial
site, or a decision assistant, such as a color picker.

Internet site builders and Web page generators have become increasingly
sophisticated, incorporating "wizards" in order to simplify the work of
authors. These wizards provide templates and other useful functions that
enable authors to produce Web pages with little or no
HTML coding by hand.

JavaScript and VBScript have been introduced to provide scripting
capability for the two most widely used Web browsers, Netscape Navigator
and Microsoft Internet Explorer, respectively. These simple-to-use
scripting languages allow a content author to write short programs that
can be activated by various Web page elements including buttons, forms,
backgrounds, and frames.

Scripts can also be used to program Web servers, as well as browsers, in
order to make content interactive. Server scripts are short programs
that provide additional Web server capabilities, such as processing
information from Web page forms. The most common way to provide
interactivity to Web pages is through Common Gateway Interface (CGI) Web
server scripts. Despite their popularity, CGI scripts can be awkward in
some cases and may place unnecessary demands on the Web server. When
they can be used, browser scripts are usually preferable to server
scripts as they cut down on unnecessary requests to the often heavily
taxed Web server.

With the introduction of the Java language by Sun Microsystems in 1995,
the Internet has become a rapidly evolving means for delivering
interactive content using text, graphics, audio, and video. Java is
quite different from the above mentioned Web server or browser
scripting.  It is a platform-independent programming language with
built-in security and network communications capabilities. Java
programs, or applets, can be launched from a Web browser, or may operate
independently from the Web, with direct access to the Internet. Several
Java builder programs, such as JFactory and Marimba's Bongo, permit
experts in a given domain of knowledge, but who have limited programming
experience, to produce interactive content using easy-to-use graphical
tools. Java is also increasingly being used for application programs,
such as word processors, spreadsheets, and database front-ends. Java's
built-in networking and security make it ideal for so-called "push"
media, wherein applications and content are updated often over a network
when new information and new versions of the software become available.
For example, a Java-based on-line newspaper can be updated with breaking
news on the user's desktop frequently, and automatically, during the
day.

WORKSHOP CONTENT

The Tune In the Net Workshop will focus on how to efficiently and
effectively design and use interactive Internet sites. During the
workshop you will learn how to:

* quickly prototype Web pages and complete sites using page generators
and site builders such as Netscape Navigator Gold, Microsoft FrontPage,
NetObjects Fusion, and Adobe PageMill and SiteMill.

* make Web page forms and link them to useful applications such as
databases, key word searches, guest books, and user surveys.

* give Web pages an interactive graphical look with client-side image
maps. This capability of both Navigator and Internet Explorer permits
clicking on different regions of an image in order to link to another
Web page or function.

* make animations. This often entails using an image-file format that
will display multiple frames as the file loads.

* use frames, HTML 3.2, as well as Netscape and Microsoft extensions, 
to customize Web pages. The latter consist of HTML functionality 
developed separately by each company that has yet to be officially
accepted as part of the recognized standard.

* use JavaScript and VBScript to give Web pages interactive
capabilities, such as personalizing pages with names and e-mail
addresses, displaying current date and time, image-flipping to produce
buttons that highlight, providing colored backgrounds that appear to
fade in from one color to another, and other special effects.

* utilize "push" media. For example, to use Netscape's InBox Direct and
explore new frontiers such as Marimba channels with Bongo. Bongo is a
Java applet, or application builder, that enables one to develop a Java
applet or application for Marimba Castanet, a new way of distributing
information on the Internet in which programs and content become
"channels" on one's computer desktop.

HOW TO SIGN UP

The workshop will begin on Monday, January 20, 1997.

The cost of the workshop is $40 US.*

To sign up for the workshop, please send an e-mail message to:

     majordomo at arlington.com

and in the body of the message, place

     subscribe tune

Or, sign up online by pointing to the URL

     http://www.crl.com/~gorgon/tune.html

In order to gain maximum advantage from the Tune In the Net Workshop, it
will be necessary to have a Web browser, preferably either a recent
version of Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The workshop leader, Thomas P. Copley,Ph.D. has successfully taught several
on-line courses in the past, including, most recently, "Make the Link
Workshop" during 1995 and 1996, and the "Go-pher-it Workshop" in 1994. He
has been actively involved in on-line teaching for more than a decade, and
has been a consultant to Apple Computer, Inc. He is also one of the founders
of the Electronic University, and has been on the faculty of Antioch College
in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and Washington State University. He is the editor
of an electronic newsletter, the Telelearning Network Synthesizer. 

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* A 25% discount is available to anyone who has already participated in
"Make the Link Workshop"(MLW), or intends to do so now.  While not a
prerequisite for the "Tune In the Net Workshop"(TINW), MLW provides
complimentary information that may also be of interest to many
participants in TINW. With the discount the cost of TINW is $30US, and
for MLW the cost is $20. For both workshops the cost is $50. For more
information about MLW, send email to info-links at arlington.com or access
the URL <http://www.crl.com/~gorgon/links.html>.


________________________________________________________________
THOMAS P. COPLEY                           tcopley at arlington.com
Tune In the Net Workshop             http://www.crl.com/~gorgon/