September 1998
The Future of Digital Photography
The Future of Digital Cameras
By Gene Wang
In the age of digital publishing, digital cameras are slow to gain acceptance. What are the issues with them and should they be incorporated into your tool kit? Gene focuses in on the future of digital photography from a technical developer's perspective.
Synchronized Multimedia on the Web
By Larry Bouthillier
Web multimedia creators have a new tool set for building time-based, streaming multimedia presentations that combine audio, video, images, and text. The proposed SMIL standard defines an XML-based language that allows control over the what, where, and when of media elements in a multimedia presentation with a simple, clear markup language similar to HTML.
The Next Big Picture
By Lisa Rein
The idea of vector graphics incorporated right into a markup language is starting to take shape, but what's the point, and where are the lines being drawn? In this article Lisa compares two experimental specifications now on the drawing board at the W3C.
C O L U M N S :
Webmaster's Domain
In this refresher course, Lincoln D. Stein explains why the Referer field is good, bad, and routinely misspelled.
Visual Designer
Looking for an all-in-one Web graphics solution? Lynda Weinman compares Adobe's ImageReady and Macromedia's Fireworks, but readily acknowledges that her comparison won't make your choice any easier.
Database Developer
Instead of database-enabled languages, vendors are introducing language-enabled databases. The language du jour is Java. Ken North shows you how to develop Java classes to install in Sybase's Adaptive Server Anywhere
database.
Programming with Perl
Thumbnails--miniature versions of full-size pictures--help visitors to a site decide whether they want to take the time to download the entire picture. Randal L. Schwartz provides a primer on creating these small masterpieces.
Java@Work
Context is king, at least when it comes to applet communication. This month Al Williams explores the AppletContext interface, showing you how to create applets that cooperate with each other and communicate with the server.
Beyond HTML
Microsoft's CDF is an XML vocabulary that lets you describe push channels to which visitors can subscribe. Michael Floyd helps you arrange for visitors to get regularly scheduled updates and navigational information from your Web site.
D E P A R T M E N T S :
Script Junkie
Frontier is an integrated Web-development system built around a high-performance object database, outliner, and scripting language. In this introduction to the framework, Bryant Durrell shows you how to create a contact database that can be easily extended by taking advantage of the Frontier paradigm.
Lab Note
Interaction can entice visitors to stay a little longer at your Web site. Imagemaps with URL hot spots do this to some extent, while interactive
technologies like VRML are hard to use. R. Shamms Mortier explores a new middle ground.
The Home Page
Editor-in-Chief, Bob Kaehms tells you a story of "Six Degrees of Separation."
News & Notes
Graphic Design For Managers; When Does a Webcam Become a Robot?
The Last Page
Editorial Director Dale Dougherty talks about how "IBM Takes 'Free' Apache Seriously."
