Technical: Setting Properly your Web reader

If you can't view some of the inline images

Please upgrade to a browser which supports inline JFIF/JPEGs! If you are not yet a computer wizard, I would suggest choosing:

Windows, Mac or Unix users: Netscape
OS/2 users: Netscape for Windows, or IBM WebExplorer. Netscape appears to be better (not having to wait until a page is completely loaded to click on a link) but isn't a native OS/2 application.

Other browsers supporting inline JFIF/JPEGs (but harder to set up) include Chimera (Unix), Emacs W3-mode, and even the very latest versions of NCSA Mosaic after installing all the required external applications...

Audio troubleshooting

Each platform out there has its own standard:

Windows uses Waveform files (.wav)
Macs use AIFF files (.aiff)
Unix machines often use SunAudio files (.au)
There is an emerging high-quality (CD) standard called Audio MPEG (.mp2). There are slight chances that you encounter any such file, so maybe you will want to skip Audio MPEG support right now and save a bookmark to this page in case you need it later.

Windows

If you don't have a sound card, install the pc speaker driver speak.exe available from Dec or ftp.cdrom.com.

Common formats (AU, WAV, AIFF) can be handled by Wham, wplny11.zip. If you need Audio MPEG capability, try out mpgaudio.

Mac

Common formats (AU, WAV, AIFF) can be handled by sound-machine or SoundApp. If you need Audio MPEG capability, try out mpeg-audio.

Unix

Sun Unix (SunOS4 or Solaris2)

If you want to do audio streaming with Netscape (play the files while they are downloading through the network) you need xplay, which handles common AU, WAV and AIFF formats. Your mailcap file should read:

audio/*; xplay -forkoff -; stream-buffer-size=8000

Other Unices

You will have to do manual conversions with sox. For instance, to do on-the-fly conversion to AU and audio streaming through Netscape, your mailcap file should read:

audio/x-wav; sox -t .wav - -t .au - > /dev/audio; stream-buffer-size=8000

If you need Audio MPEG capability (SGI, Sun, Next, 16 bit soundcards/Linux)

Install your platform-specific maplay binary.

Note: Sun users will need to know if their output device is high-quality (CD-like) dbri such as shipped with SparcStation10 (external speakerbox) or low-quality ulaw-only amd such as low-end SparcStation IPX which must use the maplay_ulaw program instead.

Then add in the mime.types file:

    audio/x-mpeg      mp2

and in mailcap:

    audio/x-mpeg;     maplay %s

Video troubleshooting

On Windows, you'll probably need Quicktime for Windows (from earthlink or NCSA) and a MPEG player.

To play MPEG movies on a Mac, try out Sparkle (utexas or NCSA).

On a X11/Unix machine, you will need a MPEG player, and the other formats (including quicktime+audio!) can probably be handled by xanim. Make sure to have this line in your mailcap file:

        video/*; xanim +Sr +Ca +CF4 -Cn -b -B %s

Warning! xanim 2.7 and higher cannot handle the Radius Cinepak Video Codec anymore! You can either use an earlier xanim version (for instance, xanim 2.69.7.8) or try compiling xanim2700+cinepak2.tar.gz with -DXA_CINEPAK.

If the full-size images are not well rendered

If you download a full-size image, take care to view it from an application able to access a full 256-color custom colormap. This is not a problem when using 24bits TrueColor displays, however common hardware does not permit it and has a total number of allocable colors of 256.

Example: Mosaic for X11/Unix usually spawns xv as image viewer, so the colors of the images may get distorted. For xv version 3, you need to add special flags, such as "-perfect -8" (forget "-8" if you are using xv version 2) so that xv can allocate colors as necessary. Your Mosaic mailcap should read:

        image/*; xv -8 -slow24 -perfect %s

Where are mailcap/mime.types hidden on Unix ?

Netscape users: from the Options menu, select Preferences, then Helper Applications. The mailcap and mime.types files should hide around /usr/local/lib/netscape/mailcap and /usr/local/lib/netscape/mime.types.

You can override both with the file $HOME/.mailcap and $HOME/.mime.types Here is my Sun config files (both SunOS4.1.3 and Solaris 2.3):

mailcap

audio/x-mpeg; maplay %s
audio/*; xplay -forkoff -; stream-buffer-size=8000
video/*; xanim +Sr +Ca +CF4 -Cn -b -B %s
application/postscript; ghostview %s
application/x-dvi; xdvi %s

mime.types

audio/x-mpeg      mp2

If all else fails...

If the above instructions sound like Chinese to you, I suggest you write down the references (URL) of this page and bring it to your local system administrator or computer guru:

        http://sunsite.unc.edu/wm/about/tech.html

Remember that remote troubleshooting rarely works, and that seeking local help is often the key.

Once you're all set...

You will find all kind of junk in the WebMuseum auditorium, including inline JFIF/JPEGs, SunAudio files, MPEG and QuickTime movies. Enjoy!

Thanks to the BMW Foundation, the WebMuseum mirrors, partners and contributors for their support.