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Media Software
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Having an Internet browser like Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox will give you instant access to lots of websites, but there is a lot of content out there that requires you to get add-ons before you can view, listen to, watch, or unpack the content. This is a guide to the essential add-ons and what you might want them for.
Actual "media players" are the obvious place to start. These include Windows Media Player, Real Player and Quick Time player. Each player has its own unique format that cannot be played on its rivals, but each when installs will try to be your default player for every other format out there (eg: CD player, DVD player, MP3 player etc). Real Player in particular needs care taken when installing, and you should deselect any options you do not want it to 'own'. Real Player is currently required if you wish to listen to the BBC's output over the web, and for the bulk of their video content also.
Now onto some other media file formats...
PDF files are printer friendly documents that will look exactly as the creator intended. Sometimes, webpages or Word documents would have differing formatting depending on what fonts you had on your machine, your printer margins etc. PDF files have all that information fixed when they are created.
Zip files are compressed folders which can be reduced to a fraction of the size of the files contained within it. The documents within cannot be opened until they have been "upzipped", but the reduced file size makes for quicker downloading time and this is why many websites have their downloads available in this format.
Adobe Acrobat Reader
Requires MS Internet Explorer 5.5 or later to be installed on your system. Version 6 is still available for all other Windows operating systems from Win9x onwards. Macromedia Shockwave/Flash Player These are the latest versions of the Macromedia players you'll need if you want to use and enjoy an ever-growing proportion of Web sites. Install the Flash Player Note: these installations require Windows Installer to be on your system. XP users will already have this, but if you are on an older version of Windows, you may need to install Windows Installer first. This can be downloaded from Microsoft's website with either instmsia.exe Quick Time Required to view and listen to Quick Time format audio and video files, favoured by most movie trailer distributors on the web. This player can also play other formats, including your CD's; deselect these options during install if you would prefer your existing media player to retain control of these functions. To prevent the Quick Time system tray icon appearing each time you startup windows, open Quick Time and select "edit > preferences > quick time preferences" from the menu bar. On the drop down menu, select the second option "browser plug-in" and untick the option "Quick Time system tray icon". Version 6.5.2 is still available for W98SE onwards from here Real Player Required to view and listen to Real Media format audio and video files. These formats are used by the BBC for their streaming radio and television broadcasts via the web. Select the free basic service from the download page, and during installation untick the options where Real Player wants to take control of your CD and DVD playing etc if you wish your existing media players to retain control of these functions. Requires MS Internet Explorer 5.5 or later to be installed on your system. Windows Media Player The latest version of the media player pre-installed by Microsoft on all Windows computers. This latest version allows you to copy your CD's onto your computer in high quality MP3 format, where previously only the WMA format was available. Older versions of Windows Media Player WinZip WinZip is an excellent archive file manager, handling ZIP and other compression formats, including many common on the Internet, such as TAR, BinHex, UUencode and MIME. Features handy integration with Windows explorer. One of the main reasons for this update is to fix a security issue in earlier versions of WinZip involving the use of MIME-encoded files. WinZip 9 onwards supports 128- and 256-bit key AES encryption, which provide much greater cryptographic security, and encryption is now easier to use. You can now easily encrypt the files that are already in a Zip file. For all practical purposes, there is now no limit to the size of Zip files or the number of files within them. |
2000SP2/XP (Version 6 still available for W98SE/ME/NT4SP6)
View all those PDF documents found around the Internet and elsewhere. Acrobat Reader is a standalone program and browser plug-in that lets you view and print Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files. PDF files are useful for distributing documents that will always look the same, regardless of the platform and operating system they are viewed on. Please see the Web site for details.SCOTKEY - Unlocking your Computer's Potential [ Home ] - [ Advice Centre ] - [ Contacts ] - [ Services ] - [ Web Portfolio ] |