| Summary: | Introduction, This book isn't designed to be read from one end to the other, although you can do that if you want. You can start on any topic, anywhere you want. This book is intended to excite you about and involve you with multimedia. It includes a CD-ROM and a floppy disk, and I strongly suggest you look at Chapter One, "This Book Is Multimedia, " for information about installing them. If you don't own a CD-ROM drive, find someone who does. There is too much good material on the CD-ROM to ignore. The disk and CD-ROM are as important as the pages you hold in your hand. A book about multimedia must include multimedia. ¡Once you see the material on the CD-ROM, you will have a hard time resisting the impulse to get a CD-ROM drive for yourself! Many aspects of multimedia are new, but many are familiar, too. Although sitting down with a paint program such as Fractal Design Painter is a wonderful experience that requires learning new skills, multimedia also grows out of what you already do with your computer. For example, consider Word for Windows. Hardly the place for multimedia, you say? What if you could record notes about the document by speaking intoo a microphone, and listen to your notes by clicking icons in the document? That's multimedia! The best way to use this book is to start with your own computer system. If you have a sound card, explore the chapter on sounds. If you have an interest in computer art, peruse the chapter on images. If you don't own any multimedia hardware, start anywhere that interests you-each chapter stands on its own. If you need related information, I tell you where to find it. Dive right in; the computing's fine. I tried to make the book as much like multimedia as I could, bowing only to the limitations of the print medium. I reated a multimedia presentation that converts Chapter 2, "Sound Advice," into multimedia extravaganza. (You need a CD-ROM drive to see it, however; the ound and image files are too big to fit on a floppy disk.) ldts multimedia for you-impossible to put on a floppy disk. I1 you read BOOK without wanting to buy a CD-ROM drive, write and let me know why, OK? What This Book Is About This book is about what you can do today with multimedia using your computer at work or at home. It's also about multimedia's possibilities, new products on the cutting edge, and new ways of working with computers. This book covers the hottest hardware available, the software that redefines how you interact with a computer, and the tools that enable programmers and nonprogrammers to write multimedia programs. A CD-ROM disk can store more than 600 megabytes of information. It takes time to explore everything on the CD-ROM provided with the book. The best part of the CD-ROM disk is that it includes a special edition of the CD magazine Nautilus. You also will find software demos, working versions of programs, clip art, clip sounds, and many other multimedia goodies on the disk. One look at (or listen of) these examples should convince you of the possibilities in multimedia computing. That's one of the "problems" with multimediaits value remains unknown until you try it. For a historical parallel, the movie Aalon showed what happened when televisions were first sold. People didn't want to buy TVs because no one knew what they could do. Until you try multimedia for yourself, until you try to solve a problem with it, you have no idea how powerful multimedia is. The acceptance of multimedia has been slow because people want to see what multimedia can do. But prices are falling, your corner computer store now stocks CD-ROM drives, and CD-ROM software titles are multiplying faster than rabbits. The real sign that multimedia has arrived is not in the multimedia titles or the sudden popularity of sound cards, but the number of ordinary software products available on CD-ROM. Corel DRAW! Has hundreds of wonderful ilustrations and fonts available only on CD-ROM. Microsoft shipped the beta version of Windows NT on CD-ROM (a E less-than-subtle hint to buy a CD-ROM drive). Putting CD-ROM drives into the hands of software developers starts them writing software for CD-ROMs. That's one of the nice things about multimedia-when you strip away the pizazz and concentrate on the things you must do, multimedia enables you to do them much better. At its worst, multimedia is just too much data. At its best, it can be as refreshing to your imagination as a walk in the woods is to your state of mind. What This Book Is Not About I am not a salesman trying to sell you multimedia products. I'm more of an evangelist trying to sell you the multimedia concept. I'm excited about some of the products described in this book because they either do new things wonderfully or old things in wonderful new ways. If a product was hard to install, difficult to use, or poorly designed, you will know about the problem. Sometimes a mediocre product is so affordable, it's still a good value for some users. I've tried to point out such products because they are an inexpensive way to get involved with multimedia. Remember, inevitable tradeoffs come with low prices. These tradeoffs include slower performance, fewer features, and (often) no upgrade path; let the buyer beware. All hardware tests were conducted on a Gateway 2000 486/66 with 8M of memory and a 50OM Fujitsu hard drive. The manufacturer provided this hardware for the purpose of running these tests. I agreed to let my readers know whether the hardware worked well in the tests, and with one exception, everything was fine. The exception was the ATI Pro for local bus video card; it was too new. There were occasional problems with some software and with some other hardware. I can heartily recommend this hardware and manufacturer because of the solid performance I experienced. Choosing Outstanding Products While writing this book, a new product arrived on my doorstep almost daily. On Some days, there was a stack of boxes taller than I! It was difficult to consider every product in detail. Inevitablv, some products were too hard to use, some did not install properly, and so on. These products were left by the wayside. dy workman-like products mentioned in the book and the Shopper's Guide pcal needs, are great for specific tasks, or represent great values. However, Ctain products stood out. These products are powerful, well designed, a good value, and in some cases, easy to use. ach chapter features an Author's Choice product-hardware or software-that I found exceptional in its category. The icon on the left makes ese choices easy to spot. In some cases, other projects are comparable, so I chose two products to be the Author's Choice. Evolving Multimedia Multimedia is growing and changing rapidly. Even as I write this, there are serious discussions about standards and formats in the press, at conferences, and at ternational meetings. Prices continue to drop. More manufacturers and software companies are getting involved. This book is not, and could never be, the last word on multimedia, but I promise you this: there is more than enough information in this book to make the world of multimedia interesting and approachable. As multimedia evolves, I plan to issue updated editions of this book. I am interested in hearing from you about your experiences in multimedia. To contact me, you can send me electronic mail via CompuServe (my user ID is 75530,3711). I will include in future editions the best stories and multimedia adventures you send to me. If you develop really interesting multimedia applications or presentations, they might make it on the next edition of the CD-ROM but only if you tell me about them. Conventions Used in This Book One way to make a book easier to follow is establish a set of typeface conventions throughout the book. For this book, I use the following typeface conventions.
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