CLASSIFICATION OF TOOLS

• Card- or page- based tools
  Card- and page-based authoring systems organize the multimedia elements in a very simple way, similar to the logical scheme of a card in a card catalog, or a page of a book. They are useful when elements of the project allow individual viewing, just like the book pages. Navigation routines consist of going to a page or card that contains appropriate images and text, and associated sounds, animations, and video clips.
  
  These authoring tools are object-oriented. All elements - buttons, text fields, backgrounds, pages or cards, audio clips, video clips and even the whole project - are treated like objects. Objects have properties, that define their characteristics. As far as most authoring systems support a scripting language for more sophisticated applications, every object may have a program code, in the appropriate authoring tool script.
  The most popular authoring tools from this group are the HyperCard for Macintosh and the Multimedia Toolbook for PC/Windows platform.
  
  
• Icon-based tools
  Icon-based multimedia authoring tools (also called event-driven tools) offer a visual programming approach to organize and build a multimedia. First you build a structure or flow-chart of events, tasks, and decisions, by dragging appropriate icons from a library. These icons can include menu choices, graphic images, sounds, and computations. The flowchart graphically depicts the project's logic. When the structure is built, it can be enhanced with text, graphics, animation, sounds, and video movies. Then, to refine your project, you edit your logical structure by rearranging and fine-tuning the icons and their properties.
  
  There are both good and bad aspects to icons for Computer Based Training (CBT) projects. Icons help you visualize the content of a project, and they can be easy to manipulate for simple projects. However, if the icons grow too numerous, they become confusing. Icons are not substitutes for programming. There is no way an authoring system can have enough icons to support all the things needed by CBT developers. Attempts to do so typically result in projects with a mind-numbing array of indistinguishable icons. That's where available programming comes in.
  Authorware Professional for Macintosh/Windows and Icon Author for Windows are icon-based authoring tools for multimedia content creation.
  
  
• Time-based tools
  Time-based authoring tools are often regarded as the most common multimedia authoring tools. Elements and events are arranged and organized according to periods of time. Each tool from this category uses its own, distinctive approach and user interface for managing events over time. Many use a visual timeline for sequencing the events of a multimedia presentation, often displaying layers of various media elements or events alongside the scale in increments as precise as of a second. Others arrange long sequences of graphic frames and add the time component by adjusting each frame's duration of play.
  

Do the Assignment 3.1: Create some attractive examples.