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Features of Authoring Tools: by Razia Nisar Noorani

Authoring tools provide features for editing multimedia elements, organizing projects through storyboarding and flowcharts, programming interactivity through scripting languages, tuning performance across platforms, testing playback, delivering runtime projects, supporting cross-platform development, and enabling internet playability through HTML/DHTML conversion. Key features include editing tools, visual organization aids, scripting languages of varying power, branching interactivity levels, synchronization capabilities, quick testing, runtime versions, cross-platform compatibility, and web playback options.

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Lalit SinghaL
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55 views

Features of Authoring Tools: by Razia Nisar Noorani

Authoring tools provide features for editing multimedia elements, organizing projects through storyboarding and flowcharts, programming interactivity through scripting languages, tuning performance across platforms, testing playback, delivering runtime projects, supporting cross-platform development, and enabling internet playability through HTML/DHTML conversion. Key features include editing tools, visual organization aids, scripting languages of varying power, branching interactivity levels, synchronization capabilities, quick testing, runtime versions, cross-platform compatibility, and web playback options.

Uploaded by

Lalit SinghaL
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Features of Authoring Tools

Lecture 14

By
Razia Nisar Noorani
Features of multimedia authoring
tools
• Editing features
• Organizing features
• Programming features
• Interactive features
• Performance tuning features
• Playback features
• Delivery features
• Cross-Platform features
• Internet Playability
Editing features
• The elements of multimedia – image,
animation, text, digital audio and MIDI music
and video clips need to be created, edited and
converted to standard file formats and the
specialized applications provide these
capabilities.
• Editing tools for these elements, particularly
text and still images are often included in your
authoring system.
Organizing features
• The organization, design and production process for
multimedia involves storyboarding and flowcharting.
• Some authoring tools provide a visual flowcharting
system or overview facility for illustrating your
project’s structure at a macro level.
• Storyboards or navigation diagrams too can help
organize a project. Because designing the interactivity
and navigation flow of you project often requires a
great deal of planning and programming effort, your
story board should describe not just graphics of each
screen but the interactive elements as well.
• Features that help organize your material, such as
those provided by Super Edit, Authorware, IconAuthor
and other authoring systems, are a plus.
Programming features
• Authoring tools that offer a very high level
language or interpreted scripting environment
for navigation control and for enabling user
inputs – such as Macromedia Director,
Macromedia Flash, HyperCard, MetaCard and
ToolBook are more powerful.
• The more commands and functions provided
in the scripting language, the more powerful
the authoring system.
Interactivity features
• Interactivity empowers the end users of your
project by letting them control the content and
flow of information.
• Authoring tools should provide one or more
levels of interactivity:
– Simple branching , which offers the ability to go to
another section of the multimedia production.
– Conditional branching , which supports a go-to based
on the result of IF-THEN decision or events.
• A structured language that supports complex
programming logic, such as nested IF-THENs,
subroutines, event tracking and message passing
among objects and elements.
Performance tuning features
• Complex multimedia projects require extra
synchronization of events.
• Accomplishing synchronization is difficult
because performance varies widely among the
different computers used for multimedia
development and delivery.
• Some authoring tools allow you to lock a
production’s playback speed to specified
computer platform, but other provides no ability
what so ever to control performance on various
systems.
Playback features
• When you are developing multimedia project,
your will continually assembling elements and
testing to see how the assembly looks and
performs.
• Your authoring system should let you build a
segment or part of your project and then
quickly test it as if the user were actually using
it.
Delivery features
• Delivering your project may require building a
run-time version of the project using the
multimedia authoring software.
• A run-time version allows your project to play
back with out requiring the full authoring
software and all its tools and editors.
• Many times the run time version does not allow
user to access or change the content, structure
and programming of the project.
• If you are going to distribute your project widely,
you should distribute it in the run-time version.
Cross-Platform features
• It is also increasingly important to use tools that
make transfer across platforms easy.
• For many developers, the Macintosh remains the
multimedia authoring platform of choice, but
80% of that developer’s target market may be
Windows platforms.
• If you develop on a Macintosh, look for tools that
provide a compatible authoring system for
Windows or offer a run-time player for the other
platform.
Internet Playability
• Due to the Web has become a significant
delivery medium for multimedia, authoring
systems typically provide a means to convert
their output so that it can be delivered within
the context of HTML or DHTML, either with
special plug-in or embedding Java, JavaScript
or other code structures in the HTML
document.

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