While the term "new media" seems to be on the hippest of lips these days, truth be told, few seem to know what it's really about. Lev Manovich aside, the dizzying array of "media" out there is enough to drive even the stoutest of computer-art geeks...well, batty, to use a phrase apt for our holiday season. From hypertext to flash literature to Quick Time movies to javascript inventions to gif animations, there are so many "new media" that approaching any typology of the field requires the exacto eye of an arch archivist to keep track of it all.
This article, by the way, will not even attempt classifying it all. Instead, oh lucky readers of mine, I'm going to take you into the studio to have a gawk at some of the tools used to create lit[art]ure. On the way we'll discuss some of the history behind these tools, and the advantages and disadvantages of each one. Of course, the use of a particular tool depends entirely on what you want to shape with it; and in this piece, I will tell you just which media are best created which each tool. We'll start with the Macromedia mafia.
Macromedia: How I Stopped Hating and Learned to Love The Wizzy Wig
Without a doubt, Macromedia dominates the field as far as new media tools go. Makers of Flash, Director, Dreamweaver, and many other fine software products, they've done more to help refine the art of the digital age more than any single company.
Back when this humble author first began his web endeavors, he was the most prudish of purists. When it came to coding HTML, I had to write the code, the whole code, and nothing but the code. I'd heard of those fancy thingies called WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) editors, software that made coding all a matter of drag-and-drop, point-and-click visual decadence, but they weren't for me. No, comrade; I wanted code...pure, pristine brackets and slashes.
Dreamweaver changed all that. You see, Dreamweaver is the Microsoft Word of HTML; it makes formatting an HTML document all a matter of typing your content and interacting with the patented (okay, it may not be patented, but it sure is nifty) floating panels interface. But don't be fooled, my digitally-adept
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