By John Anderson
June, 2000

You've probably have visited a website that has offered to inform or entertain but have been greeted with a "Plug-in Required" warning. While most website restrict them selves to words and pictures, many sites make full use your computer’s Multimedia capability. Multimedia on the Web can involve listening to audio, watching animations and videos and retrieving information. These sites use sound and movement for training, entertaining and making their information come alive.

To experience multimedia online, you will need to have a computer with a sound and video card. Then what you need are special pieces of software called plug-ins. Plug-ins are software programs that extend the capabilities of your web browser in a specific way - giving you, for example, the ability to play audio samples or view video movies from within your web browser.

The number of file types on the Internet is enormous and growing. No one program can possibly interpret them all. This is why there is a myriad of helpers and plug-ins.

First, we should explain a couple of terms.

A helper is a program that works beside a large program such as your web browser to do some job that it either cannot do, or cannot do as well as the helper. For example a very useful helper program is GetRight (www.getright.com). It is a program to help you download files from the Internet. It allows you to easily download files and resume downloading from where you left off if errors occur.

A plug-in is a program that can seamlessly handle some file type from within your browser. Ideally, a plug-in adds features to a main program in such a way that the new capabilities seem to be part of the original program. An example of this is the ViewMovie plug-in, which integrates QuickTime sound and video into several leading Web browsers.

For Netscape Navigator Users

Navigator plug-ins need to be downloaded and installed. If you go to a web page that contains a file requiring a plug-in that you don't have, you will usually receive a message asking if you want to get the plug-in.

First, you should have a directory or folder on your computer for downloading files over the net and put new folders inside it. We suggest using the C:\Temp directory. Next close all running applications on your computer. Finally, Double-click on the file to begin installation.

Some but not all Plug-in require you to restart you computer after you complete installation. After you restart you will be able to start using the features of your new plug-in.

For Microsoft Explorer Users

Microsoft designed Internet Explorer to be able to automatically install ActiveX control plug-ins.

Shockwave is a good example of this. All you need to do is go to the Macromedia site with Explorer and click on the link to install the ActiveX control. The rest happens automatically. The next time you go to a "Shocked" website, the Shockwave control loads and plays the interactive movie.

Get Plugged-in Now

Many plug-ins and controls can be downloaded for free over the Internet. To get you started, here are a few of the more popular ones:

Currently the MSBA website has only a few pages that require a plug-in. Acrobat Reader is used to read PDF documents that can be found on our website

HTML, the code used to create web pages, cannot maintain all of the formatting and presentation for many documents. In such cases, PDF documents are used to maintain the look and presentation of the original document using a free reader available from Adobe. (www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readermain.html)

PDF is an acronym that stands for Portable Document Format. The PDF file format was created by Adobe and lets you view and print a file exactly as the author designed it, without needing to have the same application or fonts used to create the file. PDF format faithfully preserves the look and feel of the original document complete with fonts, colors, images, and layout.

It is a cross-platform file format that displays documents independent of the software, hardware, and the operating system used to create the file. In simple words, you can read a PDF document in Windows 98 that was created on a Macintosh that you downloaded from a Web site running UNIX.

Get animated and interactive with Shockwave (www.shockwave.com), one of the most useful plug-ins on the Net. At the Macromedia (www.macromedia.com) website you'll find lots of exciting "shocked" sites to see.

Flash (www.macromedia.com/software/flash/) is another popular plug-in from Macromedia. It turns your computer into an interactive animation machine.

Turn your computer into a radio or television with the Real Player (www.realplayer.com). You should have a 28.8 modem or better. Once you install the RealPlayer, you can listen to the latest newscast from National Public Radio (www.npr.org), CNN (www.cnn.com), and hundreds of other sites.

VDO Live (www.vdo.net) delivers audio and video in real time. With a 28.8 modem you will get a small video picture that runs at 10 to 15 frames per second. By comparison, the video on your TV set runs at 30 frames per second.

From Apple Computer comes QuickTime (www.apple.com/quicktime/), a plug-in for playing video clips. You can watch movie trailers and other multimedia with this useful little program.

Just in case these aren't enough, you can find an exhaustive list of Navigator plug-ins and ActiveX controls at Browser Watch (browserwatch.iworld.com). Check out either ActiveX Arena or Plug-in Plaza. You'll be amazed at the variety of these add-ons you'll find.

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