& Fonts 
for Web Browsers.
Plug-ins
& Fonts for Web Browsers.
Computing & Information Services seminar
April 9, 1998, 2-4 p.m., Hewitt 2 classroom
instructor: Jim Cerny.
http://www.unh.edu/NIS/Courses/Plug-ins/
1. Description:
"This is a review of plug-ins and font
technologies available to expand the power of your browser. Both
Netscape and Microsoft browsers are covered. We look at plug-ins
for graphics, audio, VRML, video, and TrueDoc and WEFT for fonts.
Prerequisite: Basic use of a browser.
Disclaimer:
Netscape and its bundled plug-ins a CIS supported product for
Web browsing and Adobe Acrobat is a supported plug-in. Other
plug-ins are not supported..
What unifies these two topics of plug-ins and fonts? They are
bundled in this single seminar because they involve extending
your browser's capabilities to deal with special content.
2. How plug-ins work with browsers.
Logic of how plug-ins work.
· "Plug-ins" folder for the browser (both Netscape and Explorer)
· automatically known to browser at browser launch
· requires additional memory for each plug-in when needed
MIME types.
· rely on file extensions to determine content.
· specifying in Web browsers.
· specifying on Web servers.
3. Basic, recommended, and advanced plug-ins .
Note, this table is illustrative and not necessarily complete for each plug-in
| Category | Plug-in | MIME type | Suffixes |
| basic | LiveAudio | audio/basic | au |
| audio/x-aiff | aif,aiff | ||
| audio/aiff | aif,aiff | ||
| audio/x-wav | wav | ||
| audio/wav | wav | ||
| audio/x-midi | mid,midi | ||
| audio/midi | mid,midi | ||
| basic | QuickTime | video/quicktime | mov |
| recommend | Acrobat PDFViewer | application/pdf | |
| recommend | ActiveX | audio/midi | mid |
| advanced | RealPlayer | audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin | rpm |
| advanced | RealAudio | audio/x-pn-realaudio | ram,rm |
| audio/x-realaudio | ra | ||
| advanced | Cosmo Player | model/vrml | wrl,wrz |
| x-world/x-vrml | wrl,wrz | ||
| advanced | Beatnik | audio/rmf | rmf |
| advanced | Shockwave | application/x-director | dcr,dir,dxr |
Basic plug-ins bundled with Netscape Navigator 4.x
Relationship to Java and Microsoft ActiveX components
Information about codecs (compression/decompression software)
4. Fonts review.
Some concepts and terminology.
· em · glyph · foundary · rasterize
· mathematical specification of fonts as outlines
· design issues, incl. hinting
· embedding with a word processor
Microsoft font properties extension
· planning for non-English alphabets and character sets.
PostScript.
· history and features
· advantages and disadvantages
TrueType
· history and features
· advantages and disadvantages
OpenType
· initiative from Adobe and Microsoft
· superset of PostScript and TrueType
5. Typography on the Web.
Statement of the problem:
· How use fonts in Web documents when viewer doesn't have
the font?
Create and save file as graphics.
· GIF, JPEG, PNG formats.
· inline with <IMG> tag or linked with <A> tag.
· advantages and disadvantages.
Adobe Acrobat technology.
· Acrobat Reader plug-in
· PDF files, an extension of PostScript
· created with Acrobat Distiller or Acrobat Exchange
HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
· use and misuse of <FONT> tag
· CSS alternatives
TrueDoc dynamic fonts embedding.
· Bitstream, Netscape, HexMac Software Systems
· MIME type is application/font-tdpfr and file extension is .pfr
· check Netscape 4.x "Help->Installed Font Displayers"
Microsoft WEFT (Web Embedding Fonts Tool).
use of links to .eot files
6. References:
See list of URLs on the Web page for this course:
http://www.unh.edu/NIS/Courses/Plug-ins/
jim.cerny@unh.edu
stop me before i click again!
rev. 09-APR-1998