Top - 10 Plugins

While a plain web browser allows you to view static HTML pages, Plugins are optional software additions that enhance and/or add functionality to a web browser. This means that above and beyond reading a basic web page, plug-ins let you watch Internet movies and animation, hear sound and music, read special Adobe documents, play online games, and do 3-D interaction.

Although new plug-in software is released every week, there are about 10 key plug-ins and add-on software that will serve you 99% of the time:

Adobe Acrobat Readerfor viewing .pdf files
Java Virtual Machine to run JVM to run Java applets
Macromedia Flash Player (to run .swf movies)
WinZip, which allows you to download large files in “compressed”
Real Audio Player to listen to .ram files
Apple Quicktime to see 3d Virtual Reality schematics
Windows Media Player to run a variety of movies and music format
Windows WinAmp to play downloaded .mp3 and .wav files
"Pop-Up Killer" software to reduce the annoying advertisements
Anti Virus software

The First most common Plug-in is a Flash Player and is is perhaps the most needed plug-in. 75% of the animated advertisements you see online are Flash .swf “movies” (Shockwave format)

The second most common plug-in need is for Adobe Acrobat Reader .pdf (Portable Document Format) viewing. Most government forms, online application forms, and a multitude of other documents use .pdf format on the Web.

The third most common plug-in would be a movie/audio player to run .mov, .mp3, .wav, .au, and .avi files. Windows Media Player is perhaps the most popular for this purpose, but you can use a multitude of other movie/audio choices.

The fourth most common enhancement to get is WinZip, which allows you to download large files in “compressed” (shrunken file size) .zip format, and then expand the compressed files for full use on your computer. This is the smartest tool for sending either large files, or batches of many smaller files. Technically, WinZip is not a "plug-in", but it certainly is recommended as a web browsing partner tool.

Depending on your browser habits, the likely fifth-most-common plug-in need would be for Java Virtual Machine (JVM). The JVM allows you to run online games and online program “applets” that are written in the Java programming language.