Chapter 8. Adding Rich Media

New Media developers can't avoid encountering the term Rich Media. Unfortunately, the term is very difficult to define. It seems to adopt whatever definition is tagged onto it at the time.

Macromedia has embraced the term and, for the past couple of years, has seemingly added it to every document and presentation put in front of its clients and the public at large. Thus it makes sense, for the purposes of this book, to use their version of the term.

Macromedia does not have a "corporate" definition of Rich Media. They have neither "codified" it nor defined it consistently. Actually, this is a rather wise approach, because the term is rather chameleon-like.

Listen to Macromedia use the term in a variety of situations, and you will come to understand that their interpretation of the term is "any media added to any other media that engages the user and enhances the user experience."

For example, adding an interactive Flash presentation to a Web page falls into this interpretation. A Web page, by nature, is a fairly static piece of media composed of text and images. Adding a Flash animation and allowing the user to interact with that animation adds a new dimension to, or "richens," the experience of the static page. Toss sound into the Flash animation and you make the experience even "richer." This brings us to Captivate.

At first glance you could rightfully claim the movies are Rich Media. They start out fairly static but, through the addition of sound, interactivity, and so on, they develop to the point where they meet Macromedia's interpretation. But not quite. To meet Macromedia's interpretation, media from other sourcesincluding video, GIF animations, Flash animations, and animated screen captureswill have to be added.