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Note: At some point before July I'm going to put the answers to several common questions on this page.
Well, let's face it - this flashy interactive stuff that you can experience via the web requires a rather robust system with rather up-to-date software (although my old 7100/66 is no longer a big tiger in the jungle :).
The basic requirements for these labs/modules are a browser which can handle third party Plug-ins, and of course the proper Plug-in.
Currently, this requires a browser such as Netscape 2.0 or Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 (or greater). The Plug-in that is required is the Macromedia Shockwave Plug-in, preferably the latest since some of these modules were done with Director 4 and some with the latest software Director 6. Thus, I suggest you have the latest Plug-in which can handle both formats.
When you get the Plug-in, it suggests that you have your RAM and CACHE set for rather large amounts, and it really is necessary - I know this from the many system crashes I've experienced :).
Most of these modules will fit on a 14 inch monitor (or greater) with your pixel resolution set to at least 640x480. On smaller monitors you should set your browser preferences so that nav buttons, current page, and things like that aren't visible.
As a side note, many of these labs are still "under development" which means there could be a few bugs floating around. Please let me know if you find any :) These have all be developed on a Macintosh and I haven't had a chance to see how they run on PC's but I hope they look reasonable - eventually I'll fix them up so they look good on at least the mac and pc platforms.
And as a last note, I test the modules using Netscape 3.0.1 on a PowerPC. I have heard rumors that Microsoft Internet Explorer sometimes has problems associated with Shockwave files. When I find the time I will try to examine that issue, but unfortunately, I rarely have access to a PC running MSIE.
Here are the links for the above mentioned products:
brought to you by Raman Pfaff (pfaff@ExploreScience.com)