Plug-ins that kinda suck
Plug-in junkyard
Animation
Shockwave It's one of the most popular plug-ins
around, but the Web's still far from chockablock with Shock.
Nevertheless, these inline, interactive multimedia files are worth a
look - if you can manage to steer clear of the schlock.
Audio
Talker The name says it all. Talker reads text
from enhanced Web pages, using a handful of robot-like voices.
Frightening, yet funny.
RealAudio Though you could joke that RealAudio is
ReallyAMradio, the sorta scratchy quality of streamed audio is
nonetheless state of the art. Most plug-ins are inconsequential;
this one's essential.
Specialty
techexplorer Used almost exclusively for academic
publishing, TeX/LaTeX is the digital equivalent of chiseled stone. But
higher education being what it is, the markup language is still in use.
techexplorer caters to the bifocal crowd, converting TeX/LaTeX files to
HTML.
Chemscape Chime Like chemistry? You're in luck.
Chime displays inline models of molecular structures. Bonus! They
rotate!
VRML
Live3-D
Live3-D brings VRML to the Mac as well as Windows. This Netscape default
won't even crash your browser (that often). Now, if only there were a
reason to use it.
Cosmo Player
Another quality product from Silicon Graphics. Too bad the plug-in's
Windows-only.
Video
QuickTime
Apple brings inline QuickTime movies to the Web. Be prepared, though:
The movies stream, but they're still bandwidth hogs.
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