These pages are terribly outdated and many of the links defunct. I'm in the process of recreating them, but no ETA when ShepWeb will be reborn.

NOTE: In the beginning Jeff was young and foolish and had too much time on his hands. He was very good at keeping on top of hyperlinks making sure they were always updated. Eventually he got a girlfriend and a life and started to realize there was no way he could keep up with the Web and how quickly things changes. I'm keeping this page around because there is some good stuff here, but you really ought to check out these helper application references. /js 25sep95

Helper Applications

For Macintosh WWW Browsers

Beyond the ability to display text and traverse HyperText links, WWW Browsers can also do things such as display graphic, play sounds, or view animation sequences. To take advantage of these capabilities, you must have certain helper applications on your Mac in addition to the Web Browser you are using now.

MIME stands for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. One of the purposes of MIME is to provide a standard way for mail applications to encode data so it can be sent through the Internet. Web Browsers use this coding scheme to determine what kind of file they have just been handed from the mail server. They then hand the file to the appropriate application.

File extensions are the suffix of a file usually delimited by a period. The extension can also be used to determine what application will handle the file.

If your Web Browser can't find an appropriate application to deal with a file, one of these will most likely solve your problem. The most commonly needed are StuffIt Expander, JPEGView, and SoundMachine. If you are going to be watching movies (disk space hogs), Simple Player, and Sparkle are useful, but they also require the QuickTime and Thread Manager system extensions in your Extensions Folder.

Your browser already expects to see a certain application on your disk for a certain MIME type and/or file extension. Unless you want to go into the Preferences and change the settings, choose the default application your Browser is looking for.

MIME Type: image/gif
Typical File Extensions: gif

MIME Type: image/jpeg
Typical File Extensions: jpe,jpeg,jpg

MIME Type: image/pict
MIME Type: image/x-pict
Typical File Extensions: pic, pict

MIME Type: image/tiff
Typical File Extensions: tif, tiff

MIME Type: audio/aiff
Typical File Extensions: aif, aiff

MIME Type: audio/basic
Typical File Extensions: au, snd

MIME Type: audio/x-wav
Typical File Extensions: au, snd

MIME Type: video/mpeg
Typical File Extensions: mpe, mpeg, mpg

MIME Type: video/quicktime
Typical File Extensions: moov, mov, qt

MIME Type: application/mac-binhex40
Typical File Extensions: hqx

MIME Type: application/macbinary
Typical File Extensions: bin

MIME Type: application/msword
MIME Type: application/rtf
Typical File Extensions: rtf

MIME Type: application/postscript
Typical File Extensions: ai, eps, ps

MIME Type: application/x-compressed
MIME Type: application/zip
Typical File Extensions: gz, tgz, z, zip

MIME Type: application/x-stuffit
Typical File Extensions: sit

MIME Type: text/html
Typical File Extensions: html

MIME Type: text/plain
Typical File Extensions: txt

MIME Type: text/richtext
Typical File Extensions: rtf

Here are the applications referenced above. There are multiple locations listed because the archives are not kept equally up-to-date. Some locations have a nicer interface or give more information than others (especially the OTS Archives), but they tend to be slower. The most useful/current are listed first.

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This page created: Oct94, rendered: 9/8/06
using Radio UserLand and BBEdit on a Macintosh