PC Magazine -- November 5, 1996

Real-Time Web Graphics

The WebXpresso plug-in lets you add interactive graphics to your Web site without writing any code

Jon Kaufthal

Navigator Plug-ins

DataViews Corp.'s WebXpresso Plug-in 1.1 brings dynamic 2-D and 3-D graphics to Web pages. Available only as a Netscape Navigator plug-in, WebXpresso takes a step beyond what's possible with Macromedia's Shockwave and promotes Web graphical and dynamic interaction.

WebXpresso works as a component of DV-Xpresso, DataViews' proprietary modular development tool. The free plug-in, which is available at the company's Web site, is all you need. Unlike Shockwave and other Web graphics plug-ins, Web-Xpresso doesn't transmit traditional rasterized graphics: it sends an object-oriented, parametric model of the data to the browser. This results in near-instantaneous feedback for the user's actions, because rather than relaying individual animation frames for every possible action, WebXpresso updates the model on the fly.

During evaluation, we set up WebXpresso to display a construction crane dynamically, letting the user move the crane around, adjust the arms, and even change its colors. We made the angle of perspective and the zoom factor fully adjustable as well.

Since the actual data (rather than a specific representation) is sent from the server, all of the processing is done locally once the data is received. This can be a double-edged sword: Updates don't need to query the server and have it retransmit new images, but older client PCs may seem slow.

WebXpresso is a versatile tool, well-suited to a variety of tasks. The plug-in can receive data from nearly any source (such as a database or another Web site) and quickly generate a visual model. DataViews' samples page (www.dvcorp.com/webxpresso/samples.html) shows off some possibilities. For example, there's a live stock quote chart that continually brings in data. And there's a visual model of a baseball game that can be updated for each play.

There are two catches to all this: First, WebXpresso is a Navigator plug-in only, though the company has ActiveX and Java versions in the works. And you have to use DV-Xpresso, DataViews' powerful but clunky editor, to create content.

WebXpresso is your key to dynamic Web graphics.

Copyright (c) 1996 Ziff-Davis Publishing Company

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