This page was created in 1995 to test browsers.
I've added a few things, e.g. flash since then, but have not fixed all the broken links.
See the video page for more.
Most Browsers have built in capability to display plain text, html and inline GIF, PNG and JPEG format images, however they require external viewer/helper applications or plug-ins (see below) for audio, video and other image formats. You can use these examples to verify you have installed and configured your browser to use these viewers. Some types of files cannot be displayed on all platforms.
We also list some other multi-media applications that have become popular on the Internet, but run independently of the Web and don't use Web browsers.
Mosaic categorizes files by MIME types The following lists the file type (e.g. text/plain) and gives the file name extension (e.g.txt) used to signify this type in parenthesis. See Notes on adding Viewers. More information on document types is here.
MIME Type (name extension) Example _____________________________________________________________________text/
plain (txt,text,tex,pl,c,c++,h) Computational email (36K Bytes) html (html) HTML Primer (30 K Bytes) Text .pdf - pdf Portable Document Format - Adobe Acrobat Reader (275K) .rtf - Rich Text Format (639K) .odt - ODF Text Document (Open Document Format) (208K) .doc - MS Word 1997-2003 (205K) .docx - MS Word XML 2007 (314K) .pages - Apple iWorks pages (1.0M)
basic (AU,SND) NCSA Director Larry Smarr. (144 K Bytes) (Play Time: 18 sec. = 8K Bytes/sec.= 64K bits/sec) (Note: A file extn. of .snd can be either AU format or Mac/PC format) x-aiff (AIF,AIFF) x-wav (WAV) Welcome to the WhiteHouse from the President. x-pn-realaudio (RA, RM, RAM) See more on Real Player below. Windows Media Audio (WMA) See more on Windows Media Player below. Portable audio players/Digital Media Players
MP3 | WMA | WAV | Ogg | ASF | ACC | AIFF | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Apple iPod | x | x | x | x | |||
Creative Zen Micro | x | x | x | ||||
iRiver H320 | x | x | x | x | |||
Rio Karma | x | x | x | x |
gif (GIF) Al Gore. (59 K Bytes) png sample PNG jpeg (JPG,JPEG) World Weather (local old copy) (52K bytes) x-xbm (XBM) (This was the only X bitmap image I could find If you see SPAM it is working) x-tiff (TIF,TIFF) ms.tif
msword (doc, dot) vnd.ms-excel (xls, xlc) hosts.xls hosts.xlc vnd.ms-powerpoint (ppt) hosts.ppt winhlp (hlp) netscape.hlp mac-binhex40 (.HQX) Mac History (Docs) (sit.hqx) or Easy errors (Appl) octet-stream Uuencode (.uu), dump (.dump), binary (.bin), x-tar (tar) MIME types zip (zip) example.zip x-compressed (Z) Compress Doc postscript (ps,eps) MIME Abstract, pdf (pdf) Sample PDF Portable Document Format (Adobe Acrobat) x-rtf (rtf) x-hdf (hdf) NCSA HDF (Hierarchical Data Format) Jet x-dvi (dvi) x-xsb (xsb) superbook.xsb x-director (dcr) MacroMedia Director Demo (Shockwave and Flash Demo at MacroMedia) x-director (cab) MacroMedia Flasn Shockwave and Flash Demo at MacroMedia)
The following provide local processing integrated with your browser. JavaScript is imbeded in the HTML and processed by the browser. Despite the similar name Java is a different animal. It is downloaded as an applet which contains machine independent byte-code compiled on the server and processed the JAVA Virtual Machine (JVM) which is linked into your browser. These applications can communicate over the network but are restricted to communicating with the host from which they came. ActiveX is a set of Microsoft technologies (e.g. ActiveX Controls, ActiveX Documents, AciveX Scripting, ..) that enable interactive content in Web browsers.
Java (<applet ... code=".../applet/XYZ.class">) Demo2 (Requires 32-bit OS [Win95, NT, Mac or UNIX] and NS3 or IE3) JavaScript (<script language=JavaScript>) (Demo1, Demo2) (Requires NS2 or IE3) ActiveX (<OBJECT ... CLASSID="CLSID:XYZ"> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="VBScript">) (Demos: ActiveX Controls Doc. with Stop Light Demo) (Requires Win95 or NT)
Type Example Document ______________________________________ http: http://www.w3.org/Protocols/ https: http over SSL. gopher: gopher://gopher.micro.umn.edu:70/11/Other%20Gopher%20and%20Information%20Servers ftp: ftp://ftp.research.telcordia.com/ (See: Passive FTP) file: file: (This is similar to ftp but usually denotes file on a local host that is not necessairly available over the internet.) telnet: Telcordia's online catalog of information products Subway Navigator wais: WAIS directory-of-servers index news: news:comp.infosystems.www.browsers.misc (Note: You must configure your netnews server (in Preferences under the Options menu on a Mac or by setting the NNTPSERVER environment variable in UNIX) mailto: (Note: Some WWW browsers don't support mailto) rtsp: Real Time Streaming Protocol The general syntax as defined in RFC 1738 is: <scheme>:<scheme-specific-part> Where scheme-specific-part is: //<user>:<password>@<host>:<port>/<url-path> See others at: URL - Scheme.
Streaming Audio/Video How to Listen to Audio at laurable.com and Streaming Media at mbone.com The most common kinds are radio broadcasts; e.g. WHYY NPR in Philadelphia broadcast via: MP3 pointed to with an MPEG playlist [listen.pls] (For use with Real, iTunes, Quicktime, Winamp) Play list looks like this: [playlist] NumberOfEntries=1 File1=http://207.245.67.204:80/ or MP3 pointed to with an Advanced Stream Redirector file [whyy.asx] (For use with Windows Media Player) The ASX file simply contains a URL e.g. http://207.245.67.204:80 or a RealMedia stream [live40.ram] A realMedia stream file contains a URL like: rtsp://streamer.whyy.org/encoder/live.rm CU-SeeMe - Video Conferencing (Will work on over a 28.8 kbps modem.) VDOLive - Live motion video which can run in real time at up to 15 frames per second with a 28.8 kbps modem. (video/vdo .vdo) VXtreme - Streaming Audio/Video format used by CNN. Resolution ranges from 10-20 fps w/ a 160x120 window at 28.8Kbs to 20 fps w/ a 640x480 window at 1 Mbs PointCast - Push Technology that delivers news automatically. Internet Relay Chat (IRC) - A multi-user version of UNIX talk. It works like a text version of CB radio. Real Audio - Real Time AM radio quality Audio over a 14.4Kbs modem. (FM/broadcast quality over a 28.8kbs modem and near-CD quality over ISDN) Progressive Networks, who developed RealAudio, also has RealVideo. (audio/x-pn-realaudio .ra or .ram) (A .ram file is a link to a .ra file which contains something like: rtsp://media.real.com/showcase/service/samples/b56realaudio8.rm (audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin .rpm) See RealAudio and RealVideo Test Clips In Aug. '97 MCI and Progressive Networks introduced RealNetwork a service that will for the first time deliver audio and video to broadcast-size audiences over the Internet using RealAudio technology. Windows Media Player See Windows Media Player multimedia file formats at Microsoft Internet Phone e.g. The VocalTec Telephone Gateway reduces long-distance telephone charges by routing calls and FAXs from the PSTN over the Internet. Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) - A standard language for describing interactive 3-D objects and worlds delivered across the Internet. In Aug. '97 Microsoft and Netscape agreed on the VRML standard and said they would incorporate it into future versions of their browsers. See Multimedia ref. at Yahoo, multimedia on the Internet at SunWorld On-Line and Cutting Edge Uses of the Web for others.
MIME: Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. (RFC1521 190K) HTTP: HyperText Transfer Protocol..Used to connect to WWW Servers. HTML: HyperText Markup Language....Usual format for documents. SGML: Standard Generalized Markup Language...The ISO standard Page Descr. Lang. AIFF: Audio Interchange File Format (developed at Apple and SGI) AU: uLaw Audio Format (developed at NeXT & Sun) WAV: MS Windows+ WAVE format JPEG: Joint Photographic Experts Group MPEG: Moving Picture Expert Group AVI: Microsoft Video for Windows RTSP: Real Time Streaming Protocol SCP: Session Control Protocol RTP: Real-time Transfer Protocol XBM: X bitmap.....Files created with the bitmap appl. in X Win GIF: Graphics Interchange Format(sm) Originated on CompuServe. FTP: File Transfer Protocol (TCP/IP) Gopher: Simple protocol for Internet browsing. TIFF: Tag Image File Format (printing) EPS: Encapsulated PostScript QuickTime: Architecture, developed by Apple, for the handling dynamic data types such as sound, video, and animation. CON: QuickTime format on Disney server DVI: Device-Independent.... files created by TeX. (Not to be confused with Digital Video Interactive, an A/V compression technology.) RTF: Rich Text Format HDF: Hierarchical Data Format HQX: BinHex 4.0 Format - Macintosh Binary to text conversion. SIT: StuffIt - Macintosh Compression Format ZIP: zip - PC Compression Format URL: Uniform Resource Locator.....Hypertext References to files on the Internet. URI: Uniform Resource Identifier See: Mosaic-info and MIME types and Document Types for more terms
Return to Intro and setup notes.
"The Graphics Interchange Format(c) is the Copyright property of CompuServe Incorporated. GIF(sm) is a Service Mark property of CompuServe Incorporated."