On 5/31/00 8:16 AM, Craig Spooner at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I would like to build small training
> apps for faculty that would run in students' browsers.
> But downloading the MC engine and running the app separate
> from the browser seems altogether too cumbersome. Have I,
> indeed, misunderstood how this should work?
No - the rest of the world has. :)
Here's a comparison of a Helper App vs. a Plugin:
Helper App:
1. Go to site, find out that you can't use some media until you download a
Helper app.
2. Download it, and get confused about how to install it.
3. Fiddle with your browser prefs to get it to recognize your new MIME type,
and reload the page.
Plugin:
1. Go to site, find out that you can't use some media until you download a
plugin.
2. Download it, and get confused about how to install it.
3. Leave the site you were at, quit the browser, restart the browser so it
can recognize the plugin, and hope that you can recall the URL you were at
to go back and finally view the media.
;)
Exceptions to this are QT and Flash, since both come bundled with most
browser releases for a few years now.
Real Player is an exception, being a Helper App (and a darned ugly one at
that), yet somehow people tolerate the dijointed user experience and
designers don't seem to mind not being able to integrate Real media directly
into their pages.
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World
Multimedia Design and Development for Mac, Windows, UNIX, and the Web
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