Introduction
I have searched and tested available plug-ins for two different Windows browsers (IE 7 and Firefox 2) for popular MIME types as requested in the task description. I have used a newly installed Windows XP SP2. I have also searched for available parameters that could be used when embedding files. The results are in the table below.
Results
Program (Plugin) |
MIME types |
Comments |
Parameters |
!OpenOffice.org Plug-in |
application/vnd.stardivision.calc |
Firefox sometimes hangs up when I try to open a page with embedded OOo document. However, it loads the document after killing nsplugin.exe and opening the page again. Sometimes it works without any extra actions... The document also needs the width and height not less than 600x1000 (width="600" height="1000"). IE didn't display any useful content – only grey boxes instead of documents. |
- |
Microsoft Office Plug-in |
application/x-msoffice |
Only white boxes are displayed instead of documents in Firefox. Very similar result is with IE – white boxes with a little icon on the top left are displayed. I have not found any workaround for this. |
- |
VLC Plug-in |
video/mpeg |
I could not get it working with IE 7. This browser hasn't found the plugin, although I have chosen to install IE plug-in in VLC installer. It may be that the plug-in doesn't support IE 7 or maybe it's an issue with the 7th version of the Internet Explorer. |
autoplay (autostart), autoloop (loop), mrl (src, filename), mute, visible (showdisplay), volume |
Adobe Acrobat Reader |
application/pdf |
The content and the controls can fit in a quite small (300x200) window. Everything works just perfectly. |
- |
GSview |
application/postscript |
I could not view .ps files in a browser. I could not find any other !PostScript viewer than GSview that could display .ps contents in a browser. I have also found an online PS viewer. GSview claims to work with Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer, but the instructions are very outdated, so I could not use them. |
- |
!OuickTime Plug-in |
image/jp2 |
It works well. It supports a lot of different audio/video/image formats. |
ALLOWEMBEDTAGOVERRIDES |
Windows Media Player Plug-in |
application/asx |
It works fine with all tested browsers. It can support many more media formats if required codecs are installed. These that I have listed are only the default ones. |
There are lots ot them. |
Abiword |
x-abiword |
I could not find any plug-in for Firefox or IE that could open Abiword files. I have installed Abiword, but that has not helped as there seems not to be any plugin to handle Abiword's formats within browsers. |
- |
Koffice |
x-kpresenter |
I could not find any plug-in that could display Koffice documents for any browser. This office suite is not even for windows, so I couldn't install and test if it has some built-in plug-in. |
- |
Real Player Plug-in |
audio/vnd.rn-realaudio |
It works with all tested browsers. |
Here are all available parameters documented. |
AlternaTIFF Plug-in |
application/x-alternatiff |
Works with IE/Firefox and other browsers. Here are different embedding ways described. |
src, negative (in addition to standart width, height and type) |
Adobe SVG Viewer Plug-in |
image/svg+xml |
Firefox handles svg interally, however this plug-in can be used, too. IE needs this or any other SVG plugin to display embedded SVG images. |
- |
Cortona(R) VRML Client |
model/vrml |
Works in IE/Firefox and in other browsers probably. |
Here is the full list of parameters. |
!LizardTech !DjVu Plug-in |
image/vnd.djvu |
The plug-in works with tested browsers. It displays the document even in a small (300x200) embedded window in Firefox. However, it doesn't work so fluently in IE. Internet Explorer 7 couldn't display embedded image, although it could display !DjVu document in a full window (by viewing .djvu file directly in the browser). |
Here are parameters listed and described. |
- |
model/iges |
I could not find any plug-in that would handle these MIME types. |
- |
Conclusion
I have searched and listed above available plug-ins and parameters and/or links to them. There have been some difficulties while installing and using these plug-ins, but they're not critical. In summary, I can say that there are fully functional plug-ins for the most popular MIME types. For the most popular ones (like media), there are even several plug-ins available. However, there aren't any or there are only some buggy plug-ins for not so widely used MIME types. I have found programs that could open almost every listed MIME type, but for some of these types there are no plug-ins available.