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n a world accustomed to being entertained by moving images 50 feet
high, it’s hard to understand why people are thrilled to see a grainy,
jerky, quarter-screen-sized video on a Web page. And in truth, it’s
the promise of video on the Web, not the current state of it, that has folks
excited. Many of the industry’s major players, including Microsoft and
Apple, are spending big bucks to bring that promise a little closer to reality.
In the last number of years, video on the Web has truly come into its own.
From online video’s humble beginnings as a grainy, jerky, quarter-screen-
sized moving image to the full-screen, high-fidelity movie-like imagery of
today, video is an essential element for many Web sites.
Adobe Flash video, QuickTime, RealVideo, and Windows Media Player are
the most popular formats on the Web, and all are cross-platform. Adobe
recently entered the fray itself with the Adobe Media Player. With all of
these players, video can be downloaded to the user and then automatically
played with a helper application, or it can be streamed to the user so that it
plays while it’s downloading.
This chapter describes the many different methods for incorporating
video—whether you’re downloading an MPEG file or streaming a movie—
into your Web pages through Dreamweaver.
Video on the Web
It may be hard for folks not involved in the technology of computers and
the Internet to under ...