The Elements used in Multimedia Applications

• Graphics
• Animation
• Text
• Audio
• video

Text is an important component used in many multimedia applications. They are characters that are used to create words, sentences and paragraphs. Text alone provides just one source of information. Yet, text is good at providing basic information.

It is the simplest, and often the most effective way to get one's message across. Insufficient attention given to the presentation and flow of text within multimedia application can result in the failure to communicate the presentation's central message.

Below are two examples of typefaces.example1which is taken from the vcilt site uses arial, a sanserif typeface and example2 uses times new roman, a serif type. it can be seen that example1 is more legible than example2.

Guidelines

Conventional upper and lower case text should be used for the presentation since reading is faster compared to all upper case text.

All upper case can be used if a text item has to attract attention as in warnings and alarm messages. The length of text lines should be no longer than around 60 characters to achieve optimal reading speed.

Only one third of a display should be filled with text.

Proportional spacing and ragged lines also minimizes unpleasant visual effects.

12 point text is the practical minimum to adopt for PC based screens, with the use of 14 point or higher for screens of poorer resolution than a normal desktop PC

If the users do not have their vision corrected for VDU use e.g. the public. It is recommended that text of 16 point is preferred if it is to be usable by people with visual impairments.

Sentences should be short and concise and not be split over pages

Hypertext:

Hypertext is text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text which the reader can immediately access, or where text can be revealed progressively at multiple levels of detail (also called Stretch Text).

The hypertext pages are interconnected by hyperlinks, typically activated by a mouse click, key press sequence or by touching the screen. Apart from text, hypertext is sometimes used to describe tables, images and other presentational content forms with hyperlinks.

Hypertext is the underlying concept defining the structure of the World Wide Web, with pages often written in the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). It enables an easy-to-use and flexible connection and sharing of information over the Internet.

Hypertext is basically the same as regular text - it can be stored, read, searched, or edited - with an important exception: hypertext is text with pointers to other text. The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way -- select the pointer, and you are presented with the text that is pointed to.

Hypertext documents can either be static (prepared and stored in advance) or dynamic (continually changing in response to user input, such as dynamic web pages). Static hypertext can be used to cross-reference collections of data in documents, software applications, or books on CDs.

Hypermedia:

Hypermedia is a superset of hypertext. Hypermedia documents contain links not only to other pieces of text, but also to other forms of media - sounds, images, and movies. Images themselves can be selected to link to sounds or documents. This means that browsers might not display a text file, but might display images or sound or animations. Hypermedia simply combines hypertext and multimedia. The World Wide Web is a classic example of hypermedia, whereas a non-interactive cinema presentation is an example of standard multimedia due to the absence of hyperlinks. Hypermedia is used as a medium and constraint in certain application programming interfaces. HATEOAS, Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State, is a constraint of the REST application architecture where a client interacts with the server entirely through hypermedia provided dynamically by application servers.

This means that in theory no API documentation is needed, because the client needs no prior knowledge about how to interact with any particular application or server beyond a generic understanding of hypermedia. In other service-oriented architectures (SOA), clients and servers interact through a fixed interface shared through documentation or an interface description language (IDL)

Some examples of Hypermedia might be:

You are reading a text on the Japanese language. You select a Japanese phrase, then hear the phrase as spoken in the native tongue.

You are viewing a company's floor plan, you select an office by clicking on a room. The employee's name and picture appears with a list of their current projects.

You are a law student studying the California Revised Statutes. By selecting a passage, you find precedents from a 1920 Supreme Court ruling stored at Cornell. Cross-referenced hyperlinks allow you to view any one of 500 related cases with audio annotations.