When you click on a link that contains an HTML document, your browser 'knows' what it is, and displays it accordingly - the same is true of a .gif image. When the link points to any other kind of file the browser needs to be told what to do.
The first thing the browser needs to know is what type of file it is: sound, video, archive ... Because the browser cannot play (for example) sound files, it downloads the file to your disk and then asks an application that can play the file to play it. Such applications are called 'helpers' and the browser needs to know which helper to use for any particular file type. Letting the browser know this information is called 'configuring the browser'.
The browser knows what type of file is being downloaded by the files extension (eg. .txt .gif .html). Configuring the browser involves matching these extensions to the right helper applications.
This tutorial will now give a demonstration for configuring helpers in netscape 2.0. If you are using another browser, you may still want to follow the example - as the general principles will be the same. If you are still having trouble after reading this through, you should try and locate the user-manual - or any other documentation that came with your browser.
An appropriate helper application on the Macintosh is 'Stuffit Expander'. Assuming that this application is already on our disk somewhere, we now need to configure Netscape to use it whenever a '.sit' file is pointed to.
will appear. Into the Mime Type text field, you should type application. (This just tells the browser that the helper you are telling it about is an application).
Into the Subtype field you need to say what type of files will be read. If you don't know - don't worry - it doesn't really matter what you put in here. For this example, you should put "sit-archive" in - since that is what the files are.
Now go to the Extensions text field (shown by the
cursor above) and enter the appropriate file extensions. For this example
you should enter sit
Note that you don't enter the '.', just the extension. If you want the application to open more than one type of file just add more extensions in this field - separated by commas.
(For example if you wanted to add '.hqx' and '.gz' files you would type
in sit, hqx, gz
After hitting this button, your standard file selection menu should appear. Walk through the folders in the usual way until you find the application you are looking for.
Once you have found it, select it and hit the Open button
Use this if you don't want to open the file immediately. This is useful if you are short on memory and can't afford to have the helper application running at the same time as Netscape.
This tells the helper to open the file straight away. Although this is a popular choice, it can slow your session down.
If This option is 'greyed-out', it means that Netscape can't view files of this type. If it can view them, you should select this option, as it should save time and memory.
This prompts every time a file is downloaded for a location to save it.