Plug-Ins

  I like to use a variety of somewhat obscure media formats, because it is fun to do so, and because of the additional feature sets offered by these formats.  Here is a page containing a list of plug-ins that support these formats, if they are not automatically supported on your computer.  All plug-ins listed here are free for download (or at least, they were when I listed them), although some have 'Pro' versions or the like, with extra features that you have to pay for.

  QuickTime is a piece of software written by Apple Computing.  Its original purpose was for playing movies and audio files, but it has been around for a long time and has picked up many abilities over the years.  It can still play movies and sound files (and it supports most known formats), as well as display still images in many formats, display 3D panoramic views, and play interactive Flash movies.  QuickTime ships with MacOS 7 and newer, but to get the latest version with the latest features, or to use QuickTime on a Windows machine, download it here.

  Java is a programming language developed by Sun Microsystems.  Its purpose is to let developers write programs that can be run on different kinds of computers (ex. Mac, PC) without rewriting the program for each kind of computer.  As a benefit of this ability, Java programs can be embedded into webpages; many on-line games are Java applets.  In order to run Java programs, you need to install special software, the Java VM, on your computer; to download this installer, click here.

  Some computers do not have a recent version of the Java VM that runs on their machines.  To support some of the newer features, such people can download and install the Swing API file.  This file contains support for the Java Swing programming interface, which programmers can use to easily make programs with complex user interfaces (buttons, windows, menus, text boxes, and the like).  I will include installation instructions at some point; in the mean time, try just unzipping the '.zip' file and putting the '.jar' file contained within it in a system folder or subfolder on your computer that contains a number of other '.jar' files.

  The MDL Chime plug-in is a plug-in designed to draw 3-D models of molecules.  It is quite configurable; it can show atoms with a number of different views, symbols, and color schemes, and you can easily rotate molecules around to see them from a different angle.  This plug-in is for Windows, but I have some (very limited) success in the past, getting it to work on Macs.  It can be downloaded here.

  There are many different Web browsers out there with many different features, and if you are reading this page, you are most likely using one of them.  If you need one with an ability that the one you have now lacks, there are many browsers out there that you can download.  Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator are the two mainstream browsers, although there are many alternatives.  Click for Windows browsers, or here for Mac browsers.