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.JPG (pronounced Jay Peg)

A Standard Image Compression format. It is named after the committee that invented it, the Joint Photographic Experts Group. It is designed for Compressing Full Colour or Gray Scale images of real world or natural Scenes etc.

JPEG files can be viewed on any platform as long as you have a JPEG viewer. You can view JPEG files with most web browsers. For the Mac, use JPEGView; for the PC, you can use Lview Pro or PolyView.

For more information please visit www.jpeg.org

.GIF (pronounced Jif)

Developed specifically for using on the Internet. It is a Bitmap format and is compatible with all browsers. It is useful for images where distinct separation of colours make up the image, such as images that aren't realistic including cartoons, logos and animations.

The most common graphics file format on the Internet, it stands for Graphics Interchange Format.

If your browser does not have a built-in GIF viewer (but most do), then you can use Lview Pro (lviewpxx.zip) or PolyView (polyvxxx.zip) to view these graphics on a Windows PC. On the Mac, a shareware utility called GIF Converter can be used to view and modify GIFs.

.TIFF (pronounced TIFF)

Tagged Image File Formats

A very large, high-resolution image format.

Use JPEGView for the Mac and Lview Pro or PolyView for the PC.

.BMP (pronounced Bit- Map)

Bitmap

.PDF (pronounced Pee Dee F)

Portable Document Format, a proprietary format developed by Adobe Systems, Inc. that allows formatted documents (including brochures or other documents containing artwork) to be transferred over the Internet so they look the same on any computer.

This file type requires the Adobe Acrobat Reader to view files and can be downloaded from the Adobe website.

.AVI (pronounced a vee eye)

Audio Visual Interface

The standard video format for Windows.

These files need an AVI Video for Windows player (aviprox.exe) or the Windows Media Player from Microsoft.

.WAV (pronounced wave)

Wave File

The native sound format for Windows.

On the Mac, you can use Sound App to play .wav files. For the PC, use aveform Hold and Modify or Goldwave to play these files. There's also a good program called Win Play! (wplnyxx.zip) that will play it, as well as other popular formats.

.MP3 (pronounced MP3)

MPEG-1, Audio Layer 3

The most popular file format on the Web for distributing CD-quality music. A 1 Mb files is equal to about one minute of music.

This type of file requires an MP3 player, which is available for both Macintosh and Windows.

.exe

executable program

.txt

A plain (ASCII) text file.
File Type: ASCII These files can be viewed with a word processor like Microsoft Word or a simple text editor like Simple Text or BBEdit for the Mac. For the PC you can use Notepad that comes with the Windows operating system.

.rtf

Rich Text Format

.html

Hypertext MarkUp Language

.doc

A common PC format for formatted text files.
File Type: ASCII
Although you may occasionally come across files with this extension that are not text documents, usually they are documents that were created using Microsoft Word or WordPerfect for Windows.

.xls

Excel Spreadsheet

.ppt

Powerpoint Presentation

.zip

A common compression standard for DOS and Windows that uses a DOS utility called PKZIP.

These files can be decompressed on the PC with WinZIP. You can get copies for Windows 3.1 and Windows 95/98/2000/XP (winzipXX.exe). You can also use Stuffit Expander for Mac or Windows.

.bat

Batch File

.com

Command File

.dll

Dynamic Link Library

.drv

Driver

.sys

System File

.ini

Initiation File