There has been considerable discussion about this issue over the past
few days. Below are a couple of thoughts I've had about the various
points raised in the discussion.
Zeroth, I'm aware of at least one University that has done a formal site
license with the Netscape folks. I also know a commercial company and a
not-for-profit organization that have done the same. So, "free" is not
a word that should be bandied about lightly. If you are using Netscape
for doing your day-to-day work, you should be paying for a license. If
you don't believe me, take a look at the documentation that comes with
the .ZIPped or .HQXed package. I believe the operative terminology is
"personal use".
First, the point about Lynx is well-taken. In my view of the world,
there should be a text alternative for every graphic (by graphic, I mean
every non-text object) in a WWW page. The text alternative should
describe the graphic, for example, with the creator/title/date, or the
content. The text alternative should provide a mechanism for the person
to download the graphic to display it, play it, etc., on the person's
computer, provided all the intellectual property issues have been
resolved.
Second, it is beyond me why anybody should have to become personally
involved with Macromind Director Multimedia. You can use Mosaic,
Netscape, Web Explorer, and nearly every other Web browser I've seen
either standalone or connected to the network. For example, in Web
Explorer, I click on the File item on the menu toolbar and it drops a
menu which will open either a document (a remote site's page) or a file
(a page or other object on your own computer). If you don't have any
other viewer to use, for example, a general purpose .GIF viewer, you can
kick in the name of the .gif file, for example, on my computer,
e:\temp\listuff.gif, and it will directly show the .GIF file on the
screen. Of course, in this situation, you don't have any hyperlinks to
anywhere, but you can display the graphic.
Finally, by and large, I've found that HTML is far and away the most
ubiquitous way to insure that your multimedia material can be
read/used/stolen on a maximum number of machines. I'm to the point
where, unless the person is doing some extremely original non-text
materials that they want to protect in an extraordinary way, the way we
do any kind of a presentation is to build a home page for local display
with all the hyperlinks to the pictures, videos, audios, animations,
etc., that are required. For example, one professor did a recent
presentation where we scanned in all her slides and paper originals, she
created some text screens, and then she ordered everything as she wanted
it and I automagically built her the intro page from which she could go
to the remainder of the material.
HTH.
virginia
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