----------------------------Original message---------------------------- 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: [log in to unmask] 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 [log in to unmask] or access the URL . ________________________________________________________________ THOMAS P. COPLEY [log in to unmask] Tune In the Net Workshop http://www.crl.com/~gorgon/