April 15, 1999 Web posted at: 7:48 a.m. EDT (1148 GMT) by Jeff Walsh

From...

(IDG) -- With bandwidth increasing, resistance to browser plug-ins diminishing, and vector graphics standards arriving, 1999 is shaping up to be the year that multimedia becomes a normal part of browsing the corporate Web.

Some IT managers still think of multimedia as a dirty word, but there are more and more examples of multimedia technologies being used effectively to convey information in a corporate setting.

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For example, Cisco Systems' Web site has exhaustive online demonstrations authored with Macromedia's Flash technology. These demonstrations illustrate how to set up Cisco's Catalyst 8510 and 8540 Campus Switch Routers from assembly through installation. IBM also uses Flash on its Web site to explain how some technologies work.

According to Cisco, feedback about the online animations has been positive.

"The main objective is to give someone a total picture of what's involved in getting the switch up, running, and installed," said Jim Hatlo, Web product projects manager at Cisco, in San Jose, Calif. "We're hoping to have something a little more customizable in the future, where we can serve up installation information specific to their configuration."

Hatlo said multimedia enables Cisco to better illustrate methods than is possible in print. For example, in the print documentation, there is a warning to have three people lift the switch into the rack. Online, this can be shown using animations.

"It engages people and makes them want to come back and retain what they've seen more than [with] a dry presentation," Hatlo said.

According to Jakob Nielsen, a Web usability consultant, people who cringe at the thought of multimedia are usually thinking of pointless animation and loud banner ads.

"The current multimedia normally says `look at me' and when you do, there's nothing there," Nielsen said.

But Nielsen said the opportunity exists to convey a lot of useful information.

"It's about time we start using more multimedia to convey information," Nielsen said. "Good multimedia design is similar to film design. The goal is not to be flashy."

Nielsen noted that the tools for creating animations are still targeted primarily at professional graphic designers and not at Webmasters.

"These products are not at all ready for the next level. The average designer doesn't have good enough tools," Nielsen said. "But the tools aren't holding us back -- it's people not thinking about multimedia."

One example of places where multimedia can be effective is in corporate intranets, which despite much development, are often underused, Nielsen said.

"People pay horribly little attention to their intranets," Nielsen said. "People used to think intranets were where all the action is. Right now, it's abandoned territory."

Nielsen said providing multimedia on a corporate intranet, especially for training, makes a lot of sense.

"Traditionally, an intranet has higher bandwidth, so you could allow more multimedia, such as a lot of training applications," Nielsen said. "That's a natural for a lot of internal applications."

Earlier barriers to deploying multimedia included proprietary formats, which needed to be delivered through a browser plug-in. Recent developments are mitigating such problems.

This summer, the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format should be finalized, which will deliver a standard way to deliver interactive Web content using rich fonts, better typographic controls, and vector graphics through text files.

The format will require an SVG-specific plug-in to be installed and is being backed by major Web companies, including both Microsoft and Netscape.

Plug-ins for streaming media, such as audio and video, already enjoy wide deployment. RealNetworks, producers of the popular RealAudio and RealMedia Web browser plug-ins, had over 50 million downloads in 1998.

Apple Computer next week will announce QuickTime 4.0, which will focus heavily on streaming video.

The use of streaming video presents fewer authoring problems than Web-based multimedia because it mainly involves encoding existing video productions and delivering them to users.

But the most widely-deployed multimedia plug-in is Macromedia's Flash tool. Macromedia has succeeded in making its Flash vector graphics and animation format widely accessible by striking deals to have it included with every shipping version of Internet Explorer, Netscape Communicator, and America Online software. The strategy seems to have worked, because Flash is one of the most widely installed multimedia formats, according to a recent survey.

One reason people are using Flash is to get around the current incompatibilities involved in using Dynamic HTML with browsers, according to developers.

"I love Flash because whatever you design looks the same on every computer and platform, is compact, and offers endless design options," said Eriq Chang, creative director at CyberDiva Studios in San Francisco. "It seems like a technology that has broken through its infancy: Everyone has it. It's definitely a standard now."

Another Flash developer, whose business consists entirely of building Flash sites for companies, said Flash is now becoming an accepted file format on the Web.

"We're hitting the tip of the iceberg and in six to eight months, Flash will be the same as GIF or JPEG," said Hillman Curtis, principal of hillmancurtis.com, in New York. "The plug-in won't be seen as an obstacle or barrier."

Curtis said Flash's adoption is a natural step in the evolution of the Web.

"Flash is so powerful because it adds a lot of visual communication based on motion, which is compelling and carries a lot of emotional impact," Curtis said.

The role multimedia will play in delivering useful, valuable content in corporate settings is still being determined. But the once-crowded space of plug-in vendors is thinning out, and open standards are evolving. The Web is potentially on the verge of yet another upgrade.