NEW YORK -- When it comes to using the Web as an expressive communications medium, less is more, according to John Warnock, Adobe Systems Inc.'s co-founder and CEO.
Warnock argued, in a keynote address here at Internet World '98 on Friday, that innovative tools will make Internet-based media far more exciting and help overcome the low-bandwidth limitations that today plague the Web.
"It's time for the Web to go from the hackers to the really serious communicators and be upgraded," he said.
Painting a picture of a future Web, Warnock disagreed with some industry leaders who have suggested that the Internet will become more like television. Instead, he said it would more closely parallel the complex, controlled world of print, with its sophisticated use of design and imagery.
New ways of using graphics will prove to be a boon for the Internet economy, too, Warnock said. Advertising could be made more engaging, and electronic commerce sites more compelling, with accurate, high-resolution images.
All this could be achieved with the use of new technologies for handling design and images on the Web, he argued.
"We shouldn't think of the Web as a static thing ... or HTML as something that we're going to have to hang on to for years and years," he said.
Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE), along with IBM (NYSE:IBM) and others, is championing a proposed graphics standard, Precision Graphics Markup Language, or PGML, that Warnock says could change the way people think about graphics on the Web.
PGML allows vector-based images--which are much smaller than the bit-mapped images normally used on Web pages--to be tied to Web pages, complete with hyperlinks and CD-ROM-style interactivity.
Designers could create detailed, interactive maps or images using a high-end graphics tool--such as those Adobe and Quark Inc. sell to print designers--and translate those images directly onto the Internet.
For example, Warnock demonstrated a detailed, interactive PGML map of San Francisco that takes up no more room than a standard, low-resolution Web graphic.
A first draft of the proposed standard is to be submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium standards body in December, Warnock said.
He also demonstrated an upcoming Adobe product called Spider that will gather designated Web pages and turn them into a single document in the PDF format, a print standard.
Sites can be compressed to approximately one-fourth their normal size, Warnock said. They can then be e-mailed as an attachment or placed on a CD for offline viewing.
Once loaded as a file, a site is laid out onscreen with thumbnails of each page, which a user can open with a mouse-click. Clicking on a thumbnail brings up a full view of the page. A user can then zoom in on specific sections of the page.
Warnock said Spider can retrieve pages from several Web sites and automatically compile them into a "personal newspaper."
Spider will ship within the next six months, he said.
Warnock said Adobe's aim is to give the Web all the expressiveness and visual vocabulary that exists today in print publishing, while keeping the interactivity unique to electronic media.
"We really need to transform the medium," he said.
Additional reporting by Brian Hannon of PC Week Online
NEW YORK -- When it comes to using the Web as an expressive communications medium, less is more, according to John Warnock, Adobe Systems Inc.'s co-founder and CEO.
Warnock argued, in a keynote address here at Internet World '98 on Friday, that innovative tools will make Internet-based media far more exciting and help overcome the low-bandwidth limitations that today plague the Web.
"It's time for the Web to go from the hackers to the really serious communicators and be upgraded," he said.
Painting a picture of a future Web, Warnock disagreed with some industry leaders who have suggested that the Internet will become more like television. Instead, he said it would more closely parallel the complex, controlled world of print, with its sophisticated use of design and imagery.
New ways of using graphics will prove to be a boon for the Internet economy, too, Warnock said. Advertising could be made more engaging, and electronic commerce sites more compelling, with accurate, high-resolution images.
All this could be achieved with the use of new technologies for handling design and images on the Web, he argued.
"We shouldn't think of the Web as a static thing ... or HTML as something that we're going to have to hang on to for years and years," he said.
Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE), along with IBM (NYSE:IBM) and others, is championing a proposed graphics standard, Precision Graphics Markup Language, or PGML, that Warnock says could change the way people think about graphics on the Web.
PGML allows vector-based images--which are much smaller than the bit-mapped images normally used on Web pages--to be tied to Web pages, complete with hyperlinks and CD-ROM-style interactivity.
Designers could create detailed, interactive maps or images using a high-end graphics tool--such as those Adobe and Quark Inc. sell to print designers--and translate those images directly onto the Internet.
For example, Warnock demonstrated a detailed, interactive PGML map of San Francisco that takes up no more room than a standard, low-resolution Web graphic.
A first draft of the proposed standard is to be submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium standards body in December, Warnock said.
He also demonstrated an upcoming Adobe product called Spider that will gather designated Web pages and turn them into a single document in the PDF format, a print standard.
Sites can be compressed to approximately one-fourth their normal size, Warnock said. They can then be e-mailed as an attachment or placed on a CD for offline viewing.
Once loaded as a file, a site is laid out onscreen with thumbnails of each page, which a user can open with a mouse-click. Clicking on a thumbnail brings up a full view of the page. A user can then zoom in on specific sections of the page.
Warnock said Spider can retrieve pages from several Web sites and automatically compile them into a "personal newspaper."
Spider will ship within the next six months, he said.
Warnock said Adobe's aim is to give the Web all the expressiveness and visual vocabulary that exists today in print publishing, while keeping the interactivity unique to electronic media.
"We really need to transform the medium," he said.
Additional reporting by Brian Hannon of PC Week Online
