1. You may view the Emerging Trends web site with most browsers, including Netscape 4, 6 and 7 and Internet Explorer 4, 5 and 6, Opera and Mozilla. It has been optimized for 800 X 600 screen resolution or above and should therefore look fine on most laptops as well as computers. The ET site should be accessible on all platforms, including Windows, Mac and Linux.
2. For the audio and video files, you will need to download the FREE RealPlayer RealOne program from:
There is no need to purchase the commercial version or to sign up for RealPlayer's paid subscription service. The free player plays all RealPlayer audio and video files perfectly well. Make sure you download the FREE RealPlayer and NOT the commercial RealPlayer Plus. Currently, the free player can be found at the top right corner of RealPlayer's home page.
3. In order to read PDF documents, you will need to download the latest FREE Acrobat Player from:
4. When you click on an audio or video file (e. g. a Radio Free Europe broadcast), the file is downloaded and saved to a temporary folder on your computer. Download time depends entirely on your connection speed. The RFE/RL broadcasts are usually 5 MB in size. Download time for the 5 MB file with a 28.8 kb/s modem is around 30 minutes, with a 56 kb/s modem around 15 minutes, and with broadband around 1 minute. The good news, however, is that you need to download each specific broadcast only ONCE, that is, the second time you play the same program, it will launch instantly and automatically from your own computer.
5. If you encounter any problems with any web page, you should first try to reload that page. This is done by clicking on View, Reload (in Netscape) or View, Refresh (in Internet Explorer).
6. If the font size is too small, you may adjust it under View, Text Size in IE and under Text Zoom in Netscape 6. In this respect, I would strongly recommend Netscape 6, which allows far greater font flexibility and range than Internet Explorer.
7. If your browser does not automatically show the Russian text in the proper Cyrillic encoding, go to View, Character Coding or Encoding and select Cyrillic Windows 1251 for web sites outside of Russia or Cyrillic KOi8-R for sites inside Russia. Even Russian web sites now use mostly Cyrillic Windows 1251 for their Russian text.