Using Crescendo and Crescendo PLUS with Netscape Navigator 3.0

Windows | Macintosh

Problem:

With its 3.0 or "Atlas" release, Netscape has shipped a plug-in that conflicts with the Crescendo and Crescendo PLUS plug-ins. How do Crescendo users get around this problem? In three ways:

Solution #1:

With version 2.3 beta 3 or greater of Crescendo, web authors can write their HTML so that only Crescendo will load. See the Information for Web Page Authors page for details.

Solution #2:

Navigator 3.0 activates plug-ins the reverse order of appearance in the plugins^* folder - i.e., the last plug-ins in the folder will get precedence. We want that for the Crescendo plug-in, npmidi32.dll (or npmidi16.dll, if you are using the 16-bit version).

How to make Crescendo the last plugin Navigator reads:

1. Make a new temporary plug-ins folder (say, C:\Tplug).
2. Copy all the files in the plugins folder to the temporary folder.
3. Delete all the files in the plugins folder.
4. Copy all the files except npmidi32.dll from the temporary folder back into the plugins folder.
5. Copy npmidi32.dll into the plugins folder.

Now verify the results by restarting Navigator and selecting the menu pick "Help/About Plug-ins". Crescendo should be the first plug-in listed, and all its mime types should be enabled.

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^* Here, plugins refers to a folder underneath the folder where the file Netscape.exe is located.

Notes:

• You can't tell the order of appearance of files in a folder on Windows 95 by looking at folder listings in Windows, because they are always sorted by name, type, size or date. The easiest way to check the order is to use the "dir" command from a DOS command prompt.
• Isn't this gross? Remind you of the old days of DOS TSRs? Netscape will hopefully provide us a better way, as they have with the Macintosh version of Navigator 3.0.

Solution #3:

Another way is to completely disable the conflicting plug-in by simply renaming a file -- here's how:

The Windows plug-in is a file named Npaudio.dll and it's in the plugins^* folder. Rename this to (say) XNpaudio.dll, and restart.

You can reverse the process to reenable Netscape's bundled plug-in.

This solution has the disadvantage that it prevents you from accessing the ability that Netscape's LiveAudio plug-in has to play waveform audio files which Crescendo does not handle.

Bottom Line:

Crescendo and Crescendo PLUS will continue to be the coolest web plug-ins for midi. Note that Crescendo PLUS streams MIDI files, so that the music starts playing right away -- there's no waiting till the whole file is downloaded! Look for lots more great enhancements to come!

More Details:

After this procedure, you will be able to use Crescendo and Crescendo PLUS just as in other versions of Navigator.

The essential things you need to know are:

1. On Windows, Navigator looks in its plugins^* folder for DLLs starting with "np". It ignores any DLLs which do not start with "np".

Macintosh

Installing Crescendo and Crescendo Plus in Navigator 3.0

The situation:

To use Crescendo or Crescendo Plus with Navigator 3.0, you must redirect the LiveAudio MIDI data types to Crescendo after placing Crescendo in the Plug-ins folder. Otherwise you are listening to LiveAudio not Crescendo (even if Crescendo is in the plug-ins folder and removing LiveAudio won't do it anymore) You want to do this to get the better sound quality and a better interface of Crescendo Plus.

1. Drag Crescendo into the Plug-ins folder which MUST be in the same folder as Navigator.
2. Start or restart Navigator.
3. Select General Preferences menu item from the Options menu.
4. Select the Helpers tab to get the Helpers card and scroll down to the bottom. You should see something like this:




5. Select one of the last two LiveAudio data types (as illustrated above) and double click or click on the edit button. A dialog box will appear:




6. Check to be sure that the MIME type is audio/x-midi or audio/midi. If not click Cancel and look at that other LiveAudio data types until you find these two MIME types.
7. Once you find the two MIDI MIME types, select Crescendo from the pop up menu next to the "Plug-in:" radio button. You can also change the Description to something more distinct than "LiveAudio data". Here I have used MIDI data - you can use anything you like. After you have selected Crescendo and changed the Description, the dialog will look like:




8. Click OK and then repeat Steps 6 and 7 for the other LiveAudio midi data type.
9. After assigning Crescendo to both audio/x-midi and audio/midi, the helpers window should indicate that Crescendo will be invoked for the midi data types:




10. Click OK to finish the installation.