/ Types of Web Players

Types of Web Players

I need a Web player to play the tutorial materials from school. Kat Delong

What a great question - this was a fun one to answer. These days, you need at least one media player in order to access graphics and audio on most websites. The particular player you need for accessing school materials will depend on how the materials were built online - usually the website will tell you what player you need in order to make the site work properly. Often, if you try to play a video or run graphics on a website, you will see a pop-up telling you to get Quicktime or RealPlayer in order to view the content. Occasionally, you will download the player that it says you need, but it still won’t work. I actually went through this with my mother recently. We had to download several media players before we hit on the one that worked and allowed her to view some Flip videos that I had sent her. It’s perfectly fine to have more than one player on your system, so don’t hesitate to add to your viewing arsenal.

Media Players

In no particular order, here are the top five most popular media players along with a link to their download sites:

Apple Quicktime - Many instructors make slideshows and 3-D panoramas using Apple’s Quicktime Pro, so this is a good one to have if you are doing a lot of schoolwork online. This program works for both Mac and PC users and is used in a variety of digital devices - useful if you download web items to your handheld or cell phone.

RealPlayer - This media player is also popular with instructors as well as networked radio stations for news, sports and entertainment. RealPlayer focuses on entertainment and has many offerings for music, video and television and games.

Adobe Shockwave and Adobe FlashPlayer - I’ve lumped these together as they are both Adobe products. You need these applications to enjoy state of the art technology that is used in current web development. They allow you to interact with audio and graphics in web pages and multimedia presentations, particularly in online education.

Microsoft Powerpoint Viewer -You can download this viewer if your instructor uses PowerPoint presentations on the website he is using and you don’t already have PowerPoint loaded on your computer.

Windows Media Player - This popular player may already be loaded onto your machine without you knowing it - it comes automatically with the Internet Explorer 5.5 update. It is available for most versions of the Windows operating system and can even be downloaded in a Mac version.

I hope this general overview answered your question and allows you to download the player that you need in order to view your instructor’s information. Just don’t spend too much time watching movies or playing games once you have the ability installed on your computer.