Mac

Windows

Shareware – new version

This award winning cross-platform all-in-one audio player has a lot going for it (the Rio MP3 player uses it). MusicMatch is a basic MP3/CD audio player but there's more: a built-in ripper that lets you turn your music CDs into MP3, Windows Media, or WAV files; MP3 portable player support; CDDB support; integrated Net radio tuner; etc. Requires MS Internet Explorer 4.01 or later.

See magazine feature for more information. The unregistered version allows you to record an unlimited number of tracks at 320 kbps.

Web link: www.musicmatch.com

Free

J River media Jukebox plays more than 20 media formats, including MP3, RealMedia, Windows Media, QuickTime and Liquid Audio. It also burns audio and data CDs from more than a dozen audio formats, including MP3, WMA and OGG. Media Jukebox lets you encode MP3s at up to 320Kbps, as well as Windows Media, APE and OGG. New in version 6 are CDDB2 support and multiple file ID3v2 tag editing. See the magazine feature for more information.

Web link: www.musicex.com/mediajukebox

Free

Lycos Sonique is a good digital music player without encoding capabilities. It supports many audio formats and sports a unique interface. See the magazine feature for more details.

Web link: http://sonique.lycos.com

Latest version

The standard installation of the free version of the new RealPlayer 8 now includes more than 2,500 radio stations, the ability to add visual effects synchronised to your music, enriched video quality and smoother playback over both narrow and broadband connections, support for streaming MP3s, and more. You also get RealJukebox Basic.

The more computing power you can give it, the better. Prefers 200Mhz or faster processor and more than 16Mb of RAM.

Latest trial version

GIF Animator allows you easily to create animated GIFs for your Web pages. You can browse images in a folder by previewing thumbnails, then drag and drop images into your animation. The program can convert JPEG and BMP graphics to GIFs automatically, as well as import and export AVI files. The Optimization Wizard helps create smaller file sizes. HTML source is generated for easy insertion into Web pages.

Web link: www.coffeecup.com

AltoMP3 Maker is an award-winning CD-ripping and MP3-encoding tool. You just insert your favourite audio CD, use the extract command to rip the track from the CD and convert it into an MP3 file. It also supports CDDB services (online music databases) and integrates tightly with Windows explorer.

Web link: www.yuansoft.com

For busy designers faced with the task of building complex animated GIFs, the armoury of impressive transitions and time line interface should save precious hours. So long as authors resist the temptation to include spinning gnomes, Visual GIF Animator is capable of outputting the very best banners around.

See the magazine review for more information.

Web link: www.matchware.net

Trial version

MegaView from Xequte supports a wide variety of image, video, sound, text, HTML and Office formats, such as, BMP, EMF, GIF, Animated GIF, JPEG, TIFF, WMF, MIDI, MP3, DOC, XLS, HTML, AVI, MOV, MPEG, etc. It offers advanced viewing capabilities, as well as file management and information distribution features.

Web link: www.xequte.com

Latest version

Latest plug-in from Macromedia to accompany recently released Flash 5.

Web link: www.macromedia.com

Recently updated – 30-day trial

Flash gets better. Flash is a standard for interactive vector graphics and animation on the Web. You can create resizable, compact navigation interfaces, technical illustrations, long-form animation and other great effects. Graphics and animations look great and download just as quickly whatever your screen size and resolution. Movie clip and button actions create sophisticated interactivity without scripting.

Web link: www.macromedia.com

Mac OS

NOTE: The Mac programs on this CD are mostly in archived 'HQX' (BinHex) files – they can be extracted with several applications, including Stuffit Expander (which is on the CD...). Clicking on the links below should set the process in motion. You may receive a message that the file cannot be loaded into Simple Text — if so, start Stuffit and then open the HQX file you want from within Stuffit.

Free

MusicMatch Jukebox combines into one package a CD ripper, MP3 encoder, playlist maker, ID3 tag editor and media player. Using Fraunhofer MP3 encoding technology, record high-quality MP3s from your CD collection at constant and variable bit rates of up to 320kbps.

Web link: www.musicmatch.com

Shareware

MPlay from Deep9 is a QuickTime-based multimedia player. It can play audio files such as MP3, AIFF, and WAV, as well as MOV, MPEG and AVI video files. MPlay also plays MIDI files and can display images. It features a track mixer with volume, pitch, overlap, fade-in, fade-out controls for each song, and a built-in ID3 tag editor. In this version live VU-meters have been added to visualise audio output. A Filetype Assistant has been added that helps opening files not recognised by MPlay. The memory required to run MPlay has been reduced by 40%.

Requires Quicktime v4.

Latest version

The standard installation of the free version of the new RealPlayer 8 now includes more than 2,500 radio stations, the ability to add visual effects synchronised to your music, enriched video quality and smoother playback over both narrow and broadband connections, support for streaming MP3s, and more. You also get RealJukebox Basic.

The more computing power you can give it, the better. Prefers 200Mhz or faster processor; 32Mb of RAM plus 64Mb virtual memory; OS 8.1 or later.

Save-disabled trial

WebShocker provides an integrated work environment for creating GIF animation, Java animation and QuickTime movies. The program has a paint tools layer to create animation images from scratch, an animation preview window and more than 20 transition effects. WebShocker can import GIF, PICT and Photoshop files.

This version contains over 20 new features and enhancements, adding new image retouch features, color matching for GIF animations and an Export assistant for exporting animations.

Web link: www.recosoft.com

ShockWave Flash Plugin
(68k)

Latest plug-in from Macromedia to accompany recently released Flash 5.

Web link: www.macromedia.com

Recently updated – 30-day trial

Flash gets better. Flash is a standard for interactive vector graphics and animation on the Web. You can create resizable, compact navigation interfaces, technical illustrations, long-form animation and other great effects. Graphics and animations look great and download just as quickly whatever your screen size and resolution. Movie clip and button actions create sophisticated interactivity without scripting.

Web link: www.macromedia.com

Recently updated – free

SoundApp is a utility that can play and convert a wide range of sound files, including MP3, AIFF, WAV, MOD, MIDI and others. Includes a playlist for grouping your favourite sound files together, and can perform many conversion operations, including sample rate, stereo-to-mono and bit depth. Version 2.6.1 added support for AudioCatalyst's variable bit-rate MPEG Layer 3 audio files and the MacAmp file format, improved AppleScript functionality and enhanced the playlist. Version 2.7 adds numerous improvements to the interface as well as several bug fixes.

Web link: http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/ ~franke/SoundApp/

Recently updated version

MP3 Rage is a set of tools designed to help you organise and edit MP3 files. The tools support all known versions of ID3 tags. The features include QuickEdit Windows, which allows you to individually edit MP3 tag and file information; a Cataloger, which creates a catalog of your MP3 files for use in a database application such as MS Excel; an MP3 Finder that quickly locates MP3 files by genre, title, or other criteria in a folder or disk; and a Renamer, which allows you to rename your MP3 files painlessly using tag information. You can also change the tag information of hundreds of files with the Tag Changer.

This version adds support for automatically queuing downloads when a user-specified maximum number of downloads is reached, a redesigned MP3 Organizer to allow complete customisation of how MP3's are organised, and more.

Web link: http://chaotic.digitalchainsaw.com