What can be done with multimedia? What can't be done with multimedia? Just what exactly is multimedia? Generally, the multimedia team will respond to the last question with "flash!", or perhaps "after effects!!" if we think we can get away with the file size. Technically, it could be anything made up of more than one type of media, but in actuality it's a little bit different in terms of the work we might get. At one stage, we might have been tasked with creating a gallery with the capacity to view larger versions of each image. Because of this potential diversity, I personally tend to stick with the definition as being "something cool and whooshy." The latter part is heavily re-enforced by one of our multimedia team who does indeed make "whoosh" noises as he previews and tests his work.
So what can't be done with multimedia? One of the big downsides (when using flash for example) has been search engine compatibility - a compiled flash object isn't easily indexable by a search engine. Some progress was made with this by including the text from the flash movie in the code that embedded it on the page, although this isn't a very elegant solution.
It is better solved in other ways - in the case of the gallery example above, the proliferation of the light box means this can be better achieved via javascript. It isn't even restricted to just images - you can give 'whooshy' windowed effects to all sorts of media in this way. While I don't know for sure how search engines handle the light box content, (they seem to be a law unto themselves) the form in which it is stored / presented means that at the very least the host page is indexable. Another example of overcoming this would be silverlight (into which we will delve more in another gripping blog instalment). The content is described in a XAML file which means that it is completely search engine friendly.
Another thing that multimedia (and by extension flash) was always a bit hazy on was 3d. There was always shockwave, but the steadily rising plug-in size meant that it largely lost out to its younger and smaller brother (that said, there are some fairly impressive recent examples out there). Given the steady improvement of pc components, 3d is even coming to the more commercially accepted flash, currently in the form of externally created api's like papervision, and later with an integrated engine in version 10 of the player. There is a lot of interest in this particular new and shiny aspect with ever-more-impressive demos and examples being released on a regular basis.
Accessibility can suffer, unless it is consciously worked into the design and construction, but even then it often pales next to that offered by straight html. That aside, the obvious answer to what can't be done by multimedia would be "create an ad that isn't annoying."
What can be done with multimedia? Well, given time, what can you imagine?
Nick N
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