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Introduction and Description of the Interactive Image
Format (.iif) for the World Wide Web
Jeffrey Ferguson
The Weather Underground
Dept. of Atmospheric, Oceanic & Space Sciences
University of Michigan, USA
jaf@umich.edu
The World Wide Web has proved itself as a viable transport of interactive documents. Our community continues to
create artistic, useful, functionality which piggyback's the enormous strides of raw computational power. The World
Wide Web hosts interactive experiences which evoke emotions, and it provides a communication medium introduced
this decade. It is necessary to provide an interface which captures the inovative experiecne the WWW has to offer. 'Page'
is a notion which attracted large numbers of users and creators. The Web has redefined what can be displayed on a 'page
of text'. The interactive Image Format assumes its underlying foundation to be an image. Text (and other media) are
placed 'within' the image and are revealed as a user interacts with the image (mouseOver, mouseClick). This technology
is utilized on interactive CD-ROM, however Interactive Image Format (.iif) is a language to define this functionality on
multiple WWW platforms.
Introduced here is a language used for constructing interactive images. The Weather Underground Inc., of Ann Arbor
MI, publishes real-time (less than 1 hour old) interactive meteorlogical imagery to the WWW community. Unique with
this meteorological imagery is the ability for users to receive immediate, server supplied, relevant feedback in relation to
the cursor. In other words, when one passes over a city, the current conditions are displayed, and a mouseClick retrieves
that city's forecast. A client retrieves an Interactive Image Format (.iif) file which supplies links to imagery and text to
create the interactive image.
Many WWW browsers have similar functionality built into the interface, however the displayed text is an URL, which
can often be unintelligible. IIF defines language constructs which provide the functionality necessary to generate actions
on given regions, including the displaying of.customized text based on cursor location. IIF is the language which
defines a set of regions with associated reactions to user actions. IIF files (ascii text files) are interpretted at run time.
The IIF language consists of things, actions, and reactions. Typical things are: Recatangle, Circle, Polygon, RGBColor.
Typical actions are warm (mouseOver), hot (mouseClick), and timer. Typical reactions are Show, Hide, GetURL, Front,
and Flash. This lexically small language provides a great deal of interactivity for a successful user interface. IIF can
animate icons, rolling-highlight of choice-lists, timed screen refreshes, pop-up text/menus. IIF extends the interface of
the isMap by providing immediate, relavant feedback.
The IIF (text file) is interpretted by a Java applet, and is referenced as a .HTML document. The text file is small and
travels quickly across the network. Java insures the applet is cached on the client, and only the .iif text files are
transmitted. IIF's can be built nested within each other, and thus providing a method for graphically traversing the
WWW. Images are linked to images, and any explanatory text is hidden from the user, keeping a tidy interface. When a
piece of the interface is queried (mouseOver) by the user, relavant information (text, animation, sound) is revealed. This
is in contrast to an interface which assumes a textual environment with images as perifery. IIF's ability to interpret warm
(mouseOver) actions provides an interface functionality currently missing on the World Wide Web.
Anatomy of IIF
IIF's consist of a text file in the following generic format:
named-thing1(thing-type (parameters & location)
action1 (
action2 (