Thomas P. Copley,Ph.D.

Wed Dec 18 17:26:00 EST 1996

this guy has it going:

 | 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. 
 | 
 | -----
 | 
 | * 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/