Misc Browser Issues

And now for those things we couldn't find any other place for.

Helper Applications are programs you install on your computer that help your browser display information. Examples would be:

Ewan Telnet (windows PC) - Allows you to telnet to other sites
NCSA Telnet (Mac) - Allows you to telnet to other sites
Audio Player - Play Sounds
MPEG Player - Play movies
Quick Time Player - Another format of movie player
Adobe Acrobat Reader - a portable document format
Ghostscript Viewer - view postscript documents

Adobe Acrobat appears to be an emerging standard for providing access to documentation and technical papers without extensive re-formatting to html. Another newcomer is Real-Audio - a helper application that lets you hear real-time audio tracks.

12-02

Another issue on the Web is the concept of Welcome pages versus Home pages. A home page is the page you set up as the launching point for your browser. Home pages are directed outwards.

Welcome pages are designed to be the initial contact point for people from the outside world coming into your organization. They are designed to guide people around the information you are providing.

It all seems fairly simple, but what happened was people starting building elaborate "home" pages that other people wanted to use, so the practice got started of providing the "home" page for outside viewers. Some sites developed dual-purpose pages that filled both niches. Somewhere along the line the welcome page concept got lost, and now people use the term "home" page when they really mean "welcome" page.