THE WEB IS INTERACTIVE
![]() |
yahoo news, live game update websites fig 1.2,1.3 |
Interactivity is the capability to “talk
back” to the web server. More traditional media, such as television, isn’t
interactive in the slightest; all you do is sit and watch as shows are played
at you. Other than changing the channel, you don’t have much control over what
you see. The web is inherently interactive; the act of ;selecting a link and
jumping to another web page to go somewhere else on the web is a form of
interactively. In addition to this simple interactivity, however, the web also
enables you to communicate with the publisher of the pages you’re reading and
with other readers of those pages.
For example, pages can be designed to
contain interactive forms that readers can fill out. Forms can contain
text-entry areas, radio buttons, or simple menus of items,. When the form is
submitted, the information typed boy readers is sent back to the server from
which the pages originated. Figure 1.3
shows an example of an online form for a rather ridiculous census.
FIGURE 1.2
Yahoo! News.
FIGURE1.3
The surrealist census form.
As a publisher of information on the web,
you can use forms for many different purposes, such as the following:
·
To get feedback about your
pages.
·
To get information from you
readers (survey, voting, demographic, or any other kind of dada). You then can
collect statistics on that data, store it in a database, or do anything you
want with it.
·
To provide online order forms
for products or service available on the web.
·
To create guest books and
conferencing systems that enable your readers to post their own information on
your pages. These kinds of systems enable your readers to communicate not only
with you, but also with other readers of your pages.
WEB BROWSERS
A web browser, as mentioned earlier, is the
program you use to view pages and navigate the world wide web. A wide array of
web browsers is available for just about every platform you can imagine. Most
browsers are freeware or shareware or shareware (try before you buy) or windows
and safari is included with Mac OS X. Mozilla firefox, Netscape navigator, and
Opera are all available for free. Currently, the most widely used is Microsoft
internet explorer (sometimes called just internet explorer or IE). Despite the
fact that internet explorer has the lion’s share of the market, however, it
isn’t the only browser on the web. This point will become important later, when
you learn how to design web pages and learn about the diverse capabilities of
different browsers. Assuming that internet explorer is the only browser in use
on the web and designing your pages accordingly limits the audience you an
reach with the information you want to present.
NOTE
Choosing to develop for a specific browser,
such as internet explorer, is suitable when you know a limited audience using
the targeted browser software will view your website. Developing this way is a
common practice in corporations implementing intranets. In these situations,
it’s a fair assumption that all users in the organization will use the browser
supplied to them and, accordingly, it’s
possible to design the web pages on an intranet to use the specific
capabilities of the browser in question.
No comments:
Post a Comment