CDF Player vs. Mathematica browser plug-in
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg117174] CDF Player vs. Mathematica browser plug-in
- From: Murray Eisenberg <murray at math.umass.edu>
- Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 16:02:01 -0500 (EST)
- Reply-to: murray at math.umass.edu
What exactly is the relationship between the new CDF Player, on the one hand, and the Mathematica browser plug-in, on the other hand. So far as I can tell, if you have a full Mathematica 8 installed along with the Mathematica browser plug-in, then you can open any .nb directly in the browser (and it will start the Kernel automatically). And, if that notebook has a Manipulate, you can evaluate it in place within the browser and get the same interactivity you would had you been working directly in the Mathematica Front end. Suppose now I install CDF Player. Do documents open in that ONLY within a browser? Or does CDF Player also have some separate user interface? And once CDF Player is installed, if I open a .cdf file in the browser, does CDF Player preempt my installed Mathematica itself to evaluate the input in that file? Or is there some way to choose whether to open in the browser using the full Kernel via the Mathematica plug-in, on the one hand, or just the CDF Player, on the other hand? Finally, will CDF Player at all open a .nb? Or just a .cdf? P.S. The CDF MIME type makes perfect sense: Wolfram Wolfram Computable Document Format. However, it's an unfortunate choice of term if you search for it in the Documentation Center, since of course the first thing you get in the search result is CDF, as in "cumulative distribution function." I guess with only three symbols to use for the MIME type and so many combinations already staked out, one doesn't have so many choices for a new type designation. -- Murray Eisenberg murray at math.umass.edu Mathematics & Statistics Dept. Lederle Graduate Research Tower phone 413 549-1020 (H) University of Massachusetts 413 545-2859 (W) 710 North Pleasant Street fax 413 545-1801 Amherst, MA 01003-9305