What you need to use
the Old English Aerobics Reader
A. Browsers
The new Reader is designed to work with Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6 and Netscape version 7 (also its cousins, especially Mozilla, the free, non-commercial browser on which Netscape is based). It probably will also work (displaying some cosmetic problems) with versions 5.5 of Internet Explorer and version 6 of Netscape, but I have not tested them. It makes use of several of the more recent features of these browsers, and so it will not work with older browsers such as Netscape 4.x.
A quick check of your browser suggests that it probably be able to run the Old English Aerobics Reader. Notes on individual browsers follow.
- Microsoft Internet Explorer, version 6. Works well under Windows. I have not tested the Macintosh version. Since the standard Windows fonts lack several Old English characters, you will need to install a font such as Junicode (see below). If you have done that, and you see text mixed with garbage, select Encoding-->Unicode from the View menu. Printing is a trouble spot in IE, which seems to intercept all characters that are not in the standard Windows character set: ǣ and ȳ will not print, even though they are displayed correctly on the screen. You may print by copying text from the browser to a word processor that supports Unicode, such as a recent version of Microsoft Word.
- Mozilla, version 1.3; Netscape, version 7. Mozilla is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. I use it all the time and recommend it highly. It avoids the commercialism of some other browsers (e.g. it never tries to persuade you to visit any website or to buy anything), and it has wonderful features such as a tabbed window and the ability to block most pop-up ads. Old English Aerobics works well in Mozilla under Windows and Linux/Unix; I have not tested it on the Macintosh, but it will probably work well. Netscape versions 6 and higher are adaptations of Mozilla and will no doubt work well (version 6 is reputed to be buggy: upgrade and you will be happier). Printing is excellent under Windows, poor under Linux (where you may print by saving a web page and opening it in OpenOffice). Other good variants of this browser include Galeon (for Linux) and K-Meleon (for Windows).
- Safari. A new Mac OS X browser. Not tested yet, but early reports are positive, it is sure to be popular, and I will try to support it. Please e-mail me about your experience if you have run Old English Aerobics on it.
- Konqueror. A Linux browser. It does not lay out the Reader's pages properly.
- Opera. A commercial browser, available for Windows, the Macintosh, Linux and other systems. I have tested version 7.11 for Windows. It works, but with some cosmetic deficiencies which are apparently the result of this browser's incomplete implementation of W3C standards. Printing is poor.
B. Fonts
Displaying or printing Old English requires several characters that are not in the fonts supplied with Microsoft Windows (though they are part of the Unicode standard on which these fonts are based). If some characters appear as boxes or question marks in your browser, download the free Junicode font, which should work equally well under Mac OS X and Linux. If you already have Junicode, you may have to upgrade, as characters are added to it periodically. Other fonts that will work include Victor Gaultney's excellent Gentium and George Williams's Caslon. Old English Aerobics will look for these (and any others I hear of) before it defaults to a standard system font.
C. Audio
To play the audio files in Old English Aerobics, you will need to download and install a Real Media player. The free version will do just fine. Search for it carefully on the Real.com page: the links for the pay version are understandably much more prominent than those for the free one.