Chem 81 Plug-ins

To take full advantage of this web site, your browser (any of Netscape Navigator version 4 or higher, Netscape Communicator version 4 or higher, or Microsoft Internet Explorer, version 5 or higher, operating on a Power Mac OS System 7.5 or higher or Microsoft Windows 95 or higher operating systems) will need help in the form of free plug-ins. A plug-in is a bit of code that works as if it were a part of the application. Plug-ins are often stored in folders called "Plug-ins" or "Plugins," cleverly enough, but recent changes to Internet Explorer under Windows use a variant of the plug-in approach that works a bit differently. The download sites listed below have detailed installation instructions for each.

The Adobe Acrobat Reader is a free bit of software that allows one to view and print certain documents on any of several computer platforms (including Mac OS, Windows, and UNIX). The documents themselves are called "Portable Document Format" files, pdf for short (and all such files you download through the Internet end in ".pdf" to alert the browser to the type of file at hand). A pdf file is produced from just about any other application in a fairly easy way. When such a file is downloaded, there are three possible ways it can be treated:

To save files to your hard disk from links at this site, click and hold down the mouse button on a link to the file (Mac OS) or right-click a link (Windows) to bring up a contextual menu. Select "Save this link as..." (or the similarly worded command) and choose a location on your computer to save the file. It will be downloaded once you have chosen a location. This technique should work whether or not you have Acrobat Reader.

If you have Acrobat Reader installed as a helper application (and if you have sufficient RAM on your computer to open both a browser and Reader at the same time), the file will be downloaded, Reader will be launched or switched to, and the file will open. It can be saved or printed from Reader.

If you have installed the plug-in, it will load automatically (once your browser has been told to do so - check the installation instructions on how to do this) and display the file in your browser's window. You can print or save the file from this window.

Acrobat Reader is among the most common Internet helper/plug-in combinations, and odds are good that you already have it. If not, or if you would like to make sure you have the most recent version, click the icon below. It will take you to Adobe's page where they tout their full-featured version (so that you can create your own pdf's - at a price) and allow you to download the free stuff.

You probably already have Apple's QuickTime software installed for viewing (or listening to) multimedia files. If not, you can download the most current version from the site linked to the icon below.

You are probably familiar with applications such as Microsoft Excel that allow you to manipulate numbers in all sorts of ways, and you may know about applications such as Maple, Mathematica, or MathCad that allow you to manipulate symbols in mathematical expressions. Symbolic math is much more difficult for a computer than numerical math (a computer's only true forté), but the result is worth the programmer's effort. LiveMath is a reborn application that started life as a program called Theorist several years ago. Theorist was bought by the people who make the math application called Maple, but they let it languish. (They changed its name to MathView for a while, but never pushed it strongly as a product.) The author of Theorist, in collaboration with another company, bought the software back from Maple, and they have released it under the LiveMath name. Its strength lies in symbolic manipulation with a graphical interface that looks like real math, just as you would write it on a page. The main application, called LiveMath Maker, produces files that can be displayed and manipulated to a limited extent in a web browser. To do so, you need the LiveMath plug-in, which you probably do NOT have! We will use it in connection with the Text Extras pages in this site. Click the logo below, and follow the instructions. You need ONLY the plug-in or ActiveX code -- look for the logo below on the download page.

Chemacro for Excel

The Microsoft Excel add-in file, Chemacro.xla, is available through the link below, but read all the way through this before clicking! This is an uncompressed 80 kB file that your browser probably won't know what to do with. You should instead simply download it directly to your computer, saving it in a convenient place. See me if you aren't sure how to do this with your browser. In addition to the Chemacro file itself, a manual for its use is also available in pdf format.

Chem 81 - Plug-ins