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In this section we give a brief summary of the software that is assumed to be
available on the machine of the Tutorial user, and an overview of the
Netscape browser helper application and plugin setup that we have
assumed in our discussion.
This section is intended as a technical
aid for anyone setting up machines to use the
Tutorial. If your machine has already been configured you may neglect this
section.
All Macintoshes on which this Tutorial has been
tested run the Mac 7.1 or later operating system. Mac operating systems of
earlier vintage are now severely outdated; not all of the software used
here will even run under earlier operating systems, and little of it will run
as well as under System 7.
If your system is not already there, we strongly recommend that you
upgrade to System 7 or later.
The browsers and related software that are
required to run the Tutorial will generally need at least 8 MB of RAM, and 12
would be preferred, particularly if you use Netscape 3.0.
If you do not have 12 MB of ram installed, we suggest that
you use the
memory control panel to allocate at least 12MB of virtual memory.
Disclaimer
We do not intend this section as a dictation of the
software that you should use. Our purpose instead is
(1) to give a representative
setup as a starting point
for those who would like to modify it, and
(2) to provide a recipe to implement a
functioning setup for those not sufficiently versed in technical issues to
tackle this on their own.
As a corollary to the above disclaimer, we do not view our choice of software
as a definitive review of that software relative to other choices that could
have been made. Our choices were based on 3 principles:
-
It was necessary to make a choice of particular pieces of software to make
the Tutorial concrete and hands-on: our purpose was not to evaluate software
in any broad sense,
but to provide specific working examples of Web techniques that K-12 teachers
can use in their classrooms.
-
We used software that we knew from our own experience would perform the
necessary task in a satisfactory manner; there may be other software
that would do as well or better. For the most part, we leave others to address
such issues.
-
As far as possible, we have used Freeware and Shareware versions of
software in the Tutorial because of limited software budgets for K-12
education. Although in many cases commercial software might do an even better
job or have more technical support, we believe that all Freeware and Shareware
used here is adequate to the task and sufficiently well documented to be be
usable in the K-12 environment.
As a consequence of the Freeware/Shareware
approach, this entire Tutorial can be implemented with software costing a
total
of around $100, and the bulk of the Tutorial can be implemented with software
that is completely free (We do not count the cost of your basic computer setup
with operating system, basic utilities like editors, and networking software in
this estimate since that will normally already be available).
Some General Listings of Available Resources
As reference, we begin with two overviews of resources available for WWW setups
The first is oriented more toward server setup, but both have valuable lists of
resources usable for both clients and servers.
Software Used and Cited in the Tutorial
We now tabulate the Macintosh
software used in the tutorial. We break this down into 4
categories: (1) browsers, (2) direct browser helpers and plugins, (3)
additional software actually used in the Tutorial, and
(4) additional software
mentioned in the
Tutorial but not used directly.
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Web Browsers
|
|
SOFTWARE
|
VERSION
|
SOURCE
|
COST
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Netscape Navigator
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2.0 or beyond
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Netscape Communications
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Basic version free
for educators
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Internet Explorer
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3.0 or beyond
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Microsoft
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Basic version free
for educators
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The Tutorial has chosen Netscape 2.0 or
3.0 as the working browser for illustrations.
You may use other browsers, but
we assume that it supports (1) graphics,
(2) forms, (3) frames, (4) tables, (5) background colors and tiling,
and (6) Java. This is true of the ones
listed above (some versions of Netscape 2.0
support Java poorly, or not at all).
If your browser doesn't have these capabilities, get a new one! There is no
reason to use a browser with outdated capabilities when newer ones are freely
available.
We now list helper and plugin applications used in the Tutorial by the browser.
The specific example will be for Netscape 2.02. For
Netscape 3.0 the setup is even easier because it comes
preconfigured with many helpers and plugins.
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Browser Helpers and Plug-Ins (Netscape 2.02)
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|
SOFTWARE
|
VERSION
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FUNCTION
|
SOURCE
|
COST
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JPEGView
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3.3.1
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Image files (JPEG, TIFF, GIF)
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Tucows
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Freeware
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SoundMachine
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2.7.1
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Sound Files (mu-law, AIFF, WAV)
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Tucows
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Shareware ($10)
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TeachText or SimpleText
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Current
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Text and Pict files
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Normal Mac software
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Normal Mac software
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Sparkle
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2.4.5
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Movies (QuickTime, MPEG)
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Tucows
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Freeware
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|
Sound Manager
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3.1
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Required by Sparkle
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Tucows
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Freeware
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RealAudio Player
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8
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Streaming Audio
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RealAudio
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Freeware
|
|
Stuffit Expander |
6.0.1
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Expand and Dearchive |
Tucows
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Freeware
|
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Ghostscript & GSview
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Ghostscript 3.33
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View Postscript
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Ghostscript Home
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Freeware
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|
Adobe Acrobat Reader
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5
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PDF Files
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Tucows
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Freeware
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For reference, we now list the Netscape 2.0 helper
application setup assumed in the Tutorial (set under the "Preferences"
menu). If your machine is already configured
for Web browser applications, you may
have little or nothing to change here. We note again that Netscape
3.0 comes preconfigured with many helpers and plugins that will make
this setup even easier in that case.
|
Configuring Helper Applications (Netscape 2.0)
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MIME TYPE
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APPLICATION
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ACTION
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EXTENSIONS
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image/gif
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JPEGView
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Launch
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gif
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imagejpeg/
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JPEGView
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Launch
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jpg,jpeg,jpe
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image/pict
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TeachText
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Launch
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pic,pict
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image/tiff
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JPEGView
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Launch
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tif,tiff
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audio/aiff
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Sound Machine
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Launch
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aiff
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audio/x-wav
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Sound Machine
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Launch
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wav
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audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin
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RealAudio Player
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Plugin
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rpm
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video/quicktime
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Sparkle
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Launch
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mov
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video/mpeg
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Sparkle
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Launch
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mpg,mpeg,mpe
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application/mac-binhex40
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Stuffit Expander
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Launch
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hqx
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application/x-stuffit
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Stuffit Expander
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Launch
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sit
|
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application/postscript
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Mac GS Viewer
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Launch
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ps,eps,ai
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application/pdf
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Acrobat Reader
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Launch
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pdf
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In addition to Browser and helper software used directly by the Browser, the
Tutorial uses directly in at least one place the Freeware and Shareware
found in the
following table.
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Additional Software Used in Tutorial
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|
SOFTWARE
|
VERSION
|
FUNCTION
|
SOURCE
|
COST
|
|
QuickTime |
5.0.2
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Movies
|
Apple Software
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Freeware
|
|
CU-SeeMe |
0.87b3
|
Teleconferencing
|
RocketCharged
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Freeware
|
|
Chat
|
2.1Pre12
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Chat Server
|
Hyperarchive
|
Freeware
|
|
Flash-It
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3.0.2
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Screen Capture
|
Tucows
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Shareware ($15)
|
|
GifBuilder
|
1.0
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Animated GIFs
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Tucows
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Freeware
|
|
GifConverter
|
2.4.4
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Conversion & Manipulation of
Image Formats
|
Hyperarchive
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Shareware ($30)
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|
Transparency
|
1.0
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Remove background image color
|
Tucows
|
Freeware
|
|
Fetch
|
4.0.1
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FTP client
|
Hyperarchive
|
Freeware
|
|
NCSA Telnet
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2.7
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Telnet client
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Hyperarchive
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Freeware
|
|
HTML Editor
|
1.1.2
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Editor for HTML
|
HTML Editor
|
Shareware ($25)
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Finally, we list additional software that is not used directly in the Tutorial,
but that is cited and discussed. In most cases this represents valuable
utility Freeware and Shareware associated with compression, archiving, encoding, and conversion tasks.
|
Additional Software Cited in Tutorial
|
|
SOFTWARE
|
VERSION
|
FUNCTION
|
SOURCE
|
COST
|
|
SoundApp
|
2.7.3
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Sound Conversion & Play
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Tucows
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Freeware
|
|
ConvertMachine
|
1.2.0
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Sound Format Conversion
|
Tucows
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Shareware ($10)
|
|
Fast Player
|
1.1
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Play & Flatten Quicktime Movies
|
Fast Player
|
Freeware
|
|
flattenMoov
|
n/a
|
Flatten QuickTime Movies
|
flattenMoov
|
Freeware
|
|
Ircle |
3.1b10
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Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Client
|
Ircle
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Shareware ($15)
|
|
Stuffit Lite
|
3.6
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Stuffit Archiving & Compression
|
Hyperarchive
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Shareware ($30). Advise upgrade to commercial Stuffit Deluxe.
|
|
BinHex
|
5.0
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ASCII encode/decode binary files
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Hyperachive
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Freeware
|
|
Tar
|
3.0
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tar archiving
|
Texas Archive
|
Freeware
|
|
Suntar
|
2.2.3
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tar archiving
|
Hyperarchive
|
Freeware
|
|
MacGzip
|
1.1.1
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gzip Compression
|
Hyperarchive
|
Freeware
|
|
Graphic Converter
|
4.0.9
|
Image File Conversion
|
Lemkesoft
|
Shareware ($35)
|
|
DropOffPS
|
1.0v1
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Print Postscript
|
Hyperarchive
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Freeware
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