The most common way to view MPEG-movies from a browser on the Unix
platform, is to spawn an external application. This chapter describes
the work spent on programming an MPEG plug-in for Netscape Navigator,
one of the most popular browsers for the World Wide Web. The plug-in
is implemented for Unix platforms running the X11 Window
System. Figure 4.2 on
page 
shows the plug-in in action.
The following sections will try to explain what a Netscape plug-in is, and briefly, how to program one. The focus is then moved to the implementation of the plug-in, including choosing an available MPEG decoder, and converting it into a library suitable for use by the plug-in. The problems of multiprocess decoding, and viewing colors under X11, are shortly issued.