Johnux.com

*If you don't want to read all of this, just skip to the download table at the bottom.
I don’t know about the rest of you IT professionals out there, but I’m a bit tired of producing works that only get seen by clients after some kind of software walkthrough. This problem comes in several different flavors: Audio, Video, Web and Published works.
Audio/Video
Mac

As far as audio and video goes, Macs are very proprietary. They really try to cram iTunes and Quicktime down their users throats, but their users are generally the kind of people that enjoy those titles. They offer some important codec support, fully working right out of the box, but require a program called Perian (http://perian.org/) to get compatibility for everything non-Apple. If you are a Mac user, PLEASE DOWNLOAD THIS. VLC is also a great application that people of all platforms should at least try.

Linux section will come soon, it’s extensive and I’m eager to get some new content online. Of course, VLC Never hurts.

Windows

Windows comes with Windows Media Player, most of the required audio playback is already supported, but video is lacking support for all proprietary codecs. This is an EASY fix. There are two programs that every windows user should download and install (though there are many, these two are my favorites) VLC Player, and K-Lite Codec Pack. Installing these will configure Windows Media Player to properly play just about every proprietary codec type and if you ever find something that doesn’t play, try opening it with VLC Player. VLC isn’t the prettiest player interface, but some people prefer it’s simplicity. It does have great controls allowing you varying playback speeds for applications such as viewing security footage in slow motion. My experiences have proven it to be very reliable also.
Web
Mac

Macs come with Safari, can run Internet Explorer, and Firefox(among many others too). I admit, I have no problems with Safari, and if you would like to, you should install Firefox as well, just for fun. Install a flash player plug-in in both and you are set.

Linux distro’s usually tend to include two browsers, lately it seems Firefox is the primary browser by default. Great. Pages will work well, and though 64-bit versions of Linux don’t really support Flash, 32-bit Flash plug-ins can be adapted to do some of the playback. 32-bit Linux users are set as far as browsing is concerned, and anyone willing to use 64-bit Linux distro’s is more than likely resourceful enough to get the content they need working.

Windows

Windows is really the only platform where I see viewing web content as a complicated mess. I can sum this up in two words: Internet Explorer. IE is not a modern web browser, it doesn’t accurately display modern content, and it’s far too integrated into the operating system to offer a safe browsing environment. By using IE you are likely to see menu’s, frames, CSS and other visual page elements where they don’t belong. You are likely to contract some sort of malware, spyware, or virus, by visiting popular mainstream websites, let alone any malicious ones. Everything bad on the net is targeted at IE users because IE makes attacking the operating system so convenient. Internet Explorer has evolved a lot since its first release, but anymore it’s just trying to become more like the other browsers, adding in tabs, changing the menu style. It’s all nice looking, but viewing content is still severely flawed. What’s more is modern browsers such as Mozilla Firefox are very community driven and having more accurate surveying, more real life testing scenarios, and Mozilla’s great advertising leads me to believe that IE will never catch up. I’m not saying Firefox is the only browser in the game, because there are a few others such as Opera that offer a fantastic web experience, but IE is just not the route that anyone should take. As a web designer I find it frustrating that I’m often forced to use IE to test my sites before completing them. All of the elements will look fine in Dreamweaver or Quanta or NVU when I’m creating it. Then when I test it in Opera and Firefox it looks just as perfect, but when I test it IE there is almost always some visual element out of place that I then have to waste hours going through and correcting just for IE to handle it properly. It bugs me to say the least. If you use Windows, download Firefox, install it, and set it as your default browser. You’ll keep designers from going postal.
Updated Java and flash components are important for all operating systems so here are some links for downloading just what you need for the big 3.
Java

Windows Linux - 32-bit 32-bit RPM 64-bit 64-bit RPM Mac(it’s preinstalled – hooray if it’s working!)
Flash

Windows, Linux, and Mac versions can be found right HERE

Documents

PDF Documents - PDF's used to be my least favorite file type. PDF's being popular is proof that Adobe has way too much power and they are crazy if they think that they aren't overcharging for full Acrobat versions, by a LOT. Acrobat reader used to come with everything. You would buy a software package, it would include a PDF version of it's manual instead of a printed manual to save on money, and along with it came acrobat reader. You get a PC magazine, it would include a "demo" cd with some of the featured software being every month "Adobe Reader". Thanks for the software I could have downloaded my self. And it was always slow. From the beginning, back in the days of dialup. I didn't want to download Acrobat, but I did. I didn't want to view my online content in PDF format, but I had no other choice. It made my computer slow down to a crawl, and even some of the smaller PDF documents were upwards of 250kb. I didn't want it, didn't want it, didn't want it!!! But what were the alternatives? Without digging into the entire history of all document types throughout time, I came up with the obvious - web pages, word documents, text files. Aside from ".txt" and ".rtf," which are limited to, well, unformatted text, Microsfot Word and Wordpad ".doc" format is just as proprietary as a PDF. But they didn't offer free viewers as an online download for everyone. They also didn't make any web page plugins for viewing docs. Word docs also didn't offer a way of locking down a document as well as PDF's managed to hold their shape and content without being edited by everyone. Microsoft since then has eased up a bit with Word docs, but it's a tad late in the game as far as that is concerned. HTML required too many files, and printing and editing were just not practical for everyone. So maybe PDF's were the best option in the past. But Acrobat was terrible. Creating and editing PDF's was awful to say the least, and guess what, it still is. Even with Acrobat CS3, it's the least functional application in the CS3 suite, it freezes on me all the time, has problems installing, and I simply just never want to use it anyways. So I leave it off the install list when installing CS3. But I still need to view PDF's - This is where I found the life saving program, Fox-It reader. It's a smaller install file (Acrobat reader is now a whopping 20mb), it's faster by far, and opens, closes, and skims through documents without freezing or crashing every time. Wow! Now I actually don't mind using PDF documents. But I still hate creating them. I find that creating a document in Microsoft word, or Open Office Writer , then converting it to PDF using Primo PDF eliminates any of the old headaches I used to have. Great idea Adobe, it's just a shame you can't lighten up Acrobat and make it useable. Unfortunately Fox-It reader is only available for Windows, Linux and a series of Mobile platforms, but a Mac version is in the works, until then, check out Object Craft as the Mac alternative.

So what should you download?

For PDF's - Windows: Fox-it reader Mac: Object Craft Linux: Fox-it Reader

For all other document types - OpenOffice.org

And now, a note for developers:

It is YOUR responsibility to make sure that you are supplying reasonably common content types to your end users. Your average user is not going to have Photoshop or Gimp installed, does not develop Flash content, is not a web programmer and hasn't yet purchased an Office version capable of displaying "docx" or any strange new content type. Keep it simple. Instead of supplying PSD's, FLA's, PHP, and OOD's, stick to JPG's, SWF's, HTML, and DOC or PDF formats. Having something known by their current software will save you a headache further down the road when you are supplying free tech support so they can view the content you've created.

So what's everything you NEED to isntall, in short: