Lesson 8. Adding User Interactivity

Interactivity and user feedback are important components of Websites that can bring about a variety of benefits when integrated effectively. These benefits include helping your visitors better understand the content and purpose of your site, assisting users to more easily and directly navigate your pages, and providing visitors with a more enjoyable and productive user experience.

There are many ways to bring interactivity to a Website. Dynamic and database-driven pages, Macromedia Flash, and Quick Time Virtual Reality (QTVRmovies that support 360-degree panoramas and a interactive components) are a few examples of the many tools that can be used to create interactive pages. One of the most common and effective tools for creating interactive Websites is JavaScript, which is used primarily for client-side scripting; that is, the scripts are included on the Web pages and processed by the browser. Other scripts, including those used by Java Server Pages (JSP) are server-side scriptsthey are processed by the server and delivered to the user.

In this project, you will create rollovers with images that are already on the page and learn how to make more than one image on the page change at the same time.

Macromedia Dreamweaver simplifies the process of using standard JavaScript functions by providing behaviorsprewritten JavaScript code routines that you can easily incorporate into your Website. A behavior combines a user event (such as moving the pointer over a graphic button in the browser) with an action or series of actions that take place as result of that event. You can use behaviors to add interactivity to your pages, enabling your users to receive feedback based on their actions, and to change or otherwise control the information they see. In this lesson, you will use Dreamweaver behaviors to create rollovers, new browser windows, and menus. Dreamweaver includes a number of predefined behaviors; you can extend Dreamweaver by obtaining additional behaviors or, if you are proficient with JavaScript, you can create your own behaviors.

To see examples of the finished pages: open Completed/explorations/poses.html and Lesson_08_Interactivity/Completed/explorations/meditations.html.