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System requirements and file formats used in this web |
Page design guidelines and system requirements |
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| The AMIE result documentation was authored with two main modes of access in mind: via CD-ROM and via the Internet. All the information is accessible using a web browser, although some media will require special plug-ins. We have tried to deliver most of the material using file formats for which freely available viewers existed on most platforms. | |
| If an Internet connection is not available to you, you will still be able to browse the AMIE web in its entirety on the CD, but of course you won't be able to follow any external links, such as those leading to the pages of the project partners. If you are browsing this on the web, everything is at your disposal, but you probably won't want to access the larger multimedia files, some of which exceed 100 MB. If you are browsing this from the CD-ROM on a computer with Internet access, you'll get the best of both worlds. | |
| The main pages have been designed for quick loading. Bitmaps, icons, backgrounds and other graphical enhancements have been intentionally kept very small. Large images are available by clicking on the thumbnail previews. | |
| File names have been kept to the 8.3 format for maximum compatibility across platforms. | |
| The HTML pages conform to version 3.2 of the HTML standard and have been individually checked on the KGV validation service, which you can reach by clicking the check mark at the bottom of each page. To view these pages at their best, you'll need a browser capable of interpreting this version of the standard, such as Netscape Navigator 3 or Microsoft Internet Explorer 3. Having said that, many older browsers will still work ok, provided that they support tables. The full version of Microsoft Internet Explorer 3 has the advantage of coming with MPEG support preinstalled. | |
| The pages have been designed to be viewable with no horizontal scrolling even on screens as small as 640x480 (PDF documents and medical screen dumps excepted). To view the many pictures adequately, 256 colours is a minimum but a display with 32K colours or more is recommended. | |
| The processor speed is not relevant for viewing the main pages, but it is if you want to view the movies. Basically, regardless of AMIE, if you want to view MPEG files, you must of course have a computer with sufficient power to do so. A Pentium at 90 MHz or equivalent is the recommended minimum for software-only MPEG decoding. | |
File formats used in the AMIE web |
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| AVI: Movie, encoded according to the Audio and Video Interleaved format (MS-Windows specific). Viewers for this format are included in the standard distributions of Microsoft Windows 95, NT 4 and Internet Explorer. | |
| HTM: Hypertext page. This format is understood natively by all web browsers by definition. The standard is backwards-compatible so, even if your browser predates version 3.2, it will still be able to display the pages, albeit ignoring any clauses it doesn't understand. | |
| JPG: Image, encoded according to the JPEG (Joint Photographic Expert Group) format. This is a carefully studied lossy compression technique that preserves a very high image quality while yielding substantial savings in storage. Most modern browsers understand it natively. A high-colour (16 bits/pixel) or true-colour (24 bits/pixel) display will give the best viewing results, but an 8 bits/pixel display will still look adequate if proper dithering is employed. Displays with fewer than 8 bpp are not recommended. | |
| MPG: Movie, encoded according to the MPEG (Motion Picture Expert Group) format. The version used is MPEG-1 / System, which supports simultaneous video and audio and compresses the stream down to the bandwidth of a single-speed CD-ROM, i.e. approximately 150 KB/s. The movies included in the AMIE web have been encoded using Telemedia Systems hardware. At the time of writing, browsers don't support this format natively, but can display it using helper applications or plug-ins. A Pentium-90 or better is required for software-only decoding in real time. Some web browsers insist on copying the whole file to the local hard disc before starting playback; unless you have sufficient free space, this can sometimes be a problem with the MPG files from the AMIE documentation, which take between 50 and 100 MB each. If you are browsing from the CD instead of the web, you may prefer to view the movies directly, bypassing the browser, by pointing your MPEG player application at the files on the CD-ROM. | |
| PS: PostScript. A portable page description language understood by most high-end printers and typesetters. The application prints to a file and the file can be sent to any printer supporting PostScript (at least in theory). Software-only viewers such as the well-known GhostScript are available for on-screen preview and/or printing on non-PostScript printers. Browsers tend to only display PostScript via external helper applications. We have included PostScript versions of the papers because in many environments this is the traditional way to send documents to the printer. | |
| PDF: Portable Document Format. The version used here is 2.1. A new document type that is in some loose sense a cross between PostScript and HTML. Like PostScript and unlike HTML it allows precise description of typographical elements on the page. Unlike PostScript and like HTML, it can be immediately viewed (and searched) on screen with its freely-redistributable viewer, called Acrobat, which is available for most computing platforms and also as a browser plug-in. PDF documents can be viewed on screen or printed on paper; the Acrobat reader will print the document to your system printer, which doesn't have to support PostScript. | |
| PPT: PowerPoint (slide show application from Microsoft). Because this format may not be viewable on all platforms (although it is said that Microsoft give away a free viewer for it), any PPT documents on this web have also been offered as PDF (q.v.). However the PPT may have extra features, such as sound, or "builds", which are not available in the PDF, so if you can open the PPT files, you may want to try them instead. On a properly configured system, MS Internet Explorer lets you open the PPT from inside the browser. But if you have a different configuration you can still open the raw file yourself using PowerPoint. The version used is 7.0 (a.k.a. "95"). | |
Obtaining viewers |
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| At the time of writing, the major browsers are available at no charge for personal use or for evaluation purposes. If you have access to the Internet, contacting the manufacturers is the easiest way to get the latest version of the program for your specific computing platform. The manufacturer will also provide links to any relevant plug-ins or helper applications that you may want to use in conjunction with the browser. | |
| The MPEG page lists some MPEG players, many of them free. One (Active Movie) is available in the MS Internet Explorer 3.0 package and can be used even from within another browser. | |
| The Acrobat reader is freely available for many platforms from its manufacturer: | |
Copyright © 1996 ORL and the AMIE partners
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