Often, you may prefer to download a file to use later, such as a music file, a high-resolution graphics file, or a long text file for printing out from your own word processor and reading on paper.  Here, these can be downloaded from links all over the site. Most browsers will look at the file type and open them in the window. Since this can be irritating, we generally offer graphics and some music files in compressed form (in our case zipped format, which you recognize by the .zip suffix).

Many downloadable files will arrive compressed, to speed up the transfer to your computer, so you will need to run a decompression routine to make sense of them.  Sometimes, the browser will automatically decompress the file and put the accessible new file in the same place as the downloaded file.  You need a decompression utility, which is usually built into the browser (when decompression is automatic), and sometimes integrated into the operating system.   A free application available to expand on PC or Mac is Aladdin Expander, available for download from Aladdin System's site.

Various other files are collected on our Downloads page.  Depending on the setup of your browser, when you click on the link the file will be downloaded to the folder that you have preassigned in your browser preferences, or you will be asked where you would like it to be placed.  Often, the download will happen and the file will appear to vanish into thin air.  You can find it with the Find File command.  The name of the file is displayed in your browser when the cursor is over the link.

Many media files are generally compressed, and dealt with by the appropriate application or music player.  For example, MPEG3 (mp3) is a compressed form of audio, its data file reduced to 10% (at some cost to fidelity) so that it can be transmitted more quickly.  This is known as 'lossy' compression, because you loose some information, aka quality.  Another automatic decompression happens when you open a JPEG picture file, which has been compressed using a lossy graphics method.

When you click on a RealAudio link here, a small file is downloaded which points your browser and player to a server where the full music file is held.  That file is then sent to your computer in small, consecutive sections.  All this happens in response to a click on a link, and is pretty much invisible.

The UnZip utility is usually built into the Windows platform, and you can use it to decompress the .zip files that are downloaded when you click on the PC download link.  Stuffit Expander is the corresponding Mac utility, but it is also available for a PC.

There are many file formats in use.  MacLinkPlus is an inexpensive and very useful file conversion utility for Mac, available from DataViz.  This can decompress, fix and also convert most PC and Mac application files in each direction.