Abstract

Many present-day multimedia presentation systems utilise technologies such as JAVA applets/scripts, ASP, JSP, XML, employed to cover advanced multi-level presentation requirements. These often suffer from technology-imposed disadvantages, an example being the lack of content re-use in WWW settings. The development of a diverse range of interactive educational, scientific and industrially-based multimedia systems is described in this paper. The goal is to deliver comprehensive multimedia-system functionality over the WWW, using a single multi-purpose implementation, and minimising the need for additional web-development work. Synchronisation of multiple data-types need to be embraced, that include animations (here featuring simulation and experimental data), sound-streams (voice-over, music), static images, and text fields. This rich data-domain addresses research-data, educational and public-awareness content-levels. Each multimedia-system utilises a unique structure, described through a navigational-graph. This facilitates multiple, interactive modes within a single implementation instance. Multimedia environments are utilised, featuring such desirable characteristics as remote data-access, dynamic stream-handling and manipulation algorithms, and case-based dynamically-adjustable interaction and frame-linking through conditional high-level scripting. Multimedia-system linking is processed to create a higher-order master, multimedia system, encapsulating transition between like-minded thematic multimedia systems.