Multimedia Magic

Web Design Elements: Avatars, Gadgets, Audio, and Video

• Avatars can be used in email marketing campaigns, business or personal blogs, and e-commerce websites.
• My Virtual Model provides e-commerce websites with tools to create virtual models for customers to "try on" clothing before purchasing.
• Avatars can be used as virtual salespersons, personalized customer support, and website tutorials.
• SitePal and Media Semantics provide low-cost tools to create avatars and copy and paste HTML code to website pages.
• Avatars can also be used in social media and e-learning platforms.
• Gadgets, or widgets, are small code objects that provide dynamic web content, such as weather reports and breaking news headlines.
• Google Gadgets is a source of HTML code for gadgets.
• Audio and video can be included on websites as downloadable or streaming media.
• Streaming media begins to play as soon as the data starts to stream, while progressive downloading allows the media to play while it downloads.
• Audio files can be added to webpages for sound effects, background music, personal messages, or promotional statements.
• Web-deliverable audio sources include websites offering royalty-free and copyright-protected audio files.
• Guidelines for creating and editing audio files for the web include keeping audio messages short, considering the audio channel type, using appropriate sampling rates and bit depths, and using high-quality recordings.