What's New in this Edition?

As we explain in the Preface, the 3rd edition is a major revision of Digital Multimedia. As well as bringing the content up to date with new developments, we have improved the presentation – in particular by adding key point summaries at the end of each section – and done some re-organization of the structure. The entire text has been revised – almost every page has some changes. The table below shows where material from the 2nd edition appears in the 3rd edition, for the benefit of people who are familiar with the older edition. Consult the Table of Contents to see how the chapters of the new edition are arranged and the sampler to see the new layout and examples of the pedagogic features.

Chapters in the 2nd Edition

1	Introduction	The introduction to media, multimedia and interactivity has been completely rewritten, using a concrete example. The historical section has been shortened, and the section 'Social and Ethical Considerations' has been removed.
2	Enabling Technologies	This chapter has been retitled 'Fundamentals' and extended to include preliminary accounts of compression and each of the media types described in later chapters. A new section on metadata has been added. The introductory material on networks has been moved into Chapter 16. The section on standards has been moved into an appendix.
3	Introduction to Computer Graphics	This chapter has been removed. Most of the material has been incorporated in Chapter 2, with some going into the new Chapters 3 and 4.
4	Vector Graphics	This is now Chapter 3, but is largely unchanged, except for some improved illustrations, especially in the 3-D section.
5	Bitmapped Images	Now Chapter 4, which also incorporates some material from the old Chapter 3. A short account of JPEG2000 compression has been added and the material on image manipulation has been consolidated.
6	Colour	Now Chapter 5. The section on colour models has been improved.
7	Video	Now Chapter 6. Substantially updated. Obsolete material has been removed and new codecs, especially H.264/AVC, have been included. Coverage of multimedia architectures and video delivery format has been expanded to deal more adequately with WMV and Flash Video.
8	Animation	Now Chapter 7. This chapter has been substantially revised and re-illustrated, leading to a more coherent account. The treatment of animation delivery formats is improved. The 2nd edition's cursory section on 3-D animation has been omitted completely – an adequate account requires its own specialist text.
9	Sound	Now Chapter 8. Little change, just some slight re-organization.
10	Characters and Fonts	The material from this chapter now constitutes the first two sections of the new Chapter 9, 'Text and Typography'.
11	Text and Layout	The first part of this chapter has been incorporated in the new Chapter 9, 'Text and Typography'. The description of layout using HTML and CSS has been updated to current standards (XHTML and CCS 2.1) and is now included in the new Chapter 10 'Hypermedia'.
12	Hypertext and Hypermedia	Rewritten, updated and expanded as the new Chapter 10 'Hypermedia', which incorporates the account of XHTML and CSS, based on parts of the old Chapter 11, but updated.
13	Design Principles	The chapter on design has been completely rewritten. The old Chapter 13 has been replaced by three almost completely new chapters, 11–13. (Also, much related material specifically concerning the Web is in Web Design: A Complete Introduction.) The new Chapter 11 'Visual Design' includes new coverage of Semiotics, Gestalt and colour principles. The accessibility material has been expanded into its own chapter. Chapter 12, 'Interactivity' is new in the 3rd edition.
14	XML and Multimedia	XML is now covered in the new Chapter 15. The sections on XLink and stylesheets have been omitted as no longer relevant.
15	SMIL and SVG	This chapter has been omitted. SVG has been incorporated into the new Chapter 15, with XML. SMIL has been dropped.
16	Scripting and Interactivity	The new Chapter 14, 'Scripting' is an expanded and updated treatment of scripting, which deals with DOM scripting for the Web and ActionScript. The new Chapter 12, 'Interactivity' is an account of issues concerning interactivity, with examples of interacting with and through multimedia.
17	Multimedia and Networks	Now Chapter 16. Descriptions of RSS, podcasts and P2P file-sharing (BitTorrent) have been added.