Robin Williams Mac OS X Book, Jaguar Edition, The

What are all those Files?

When you download software from the Internet, it can be mighty confusing. Several files will probably appear during the process. They have “extensions” at the ends of their file names that give you a clue as to what they are—some extensions indicate a file is “compressed” so it goes through the Internet lines faster; some indicate the file is “encoded” so it arrives on a particular type of computer with all of its data intact. Here is a list of the most common extensions you will see, plus brief explanations.

You don’t really need to know all this, though, to be able to install files correctly. You can just skip to the appropriate page for the type of file that appeared on your computer, and I’ll tell you specifically ...