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With version 4 of Quicktime, Apple have come up with a powerful and stylish application for multi-media development, including fully streaming video over the Internet and this book is certainly a very useful guide to its use and implementation. The book is divided into two main sections, with part one covering the basic ideas behind Quicktime and presenting a series of step by step programming examples. Part two details coding techniques for more serious application development, including special effects and VR. Experienced developers are well served by the excellent overview of the technology for both the Mac and Windows environments, while the more casual reader will find the explanations on how Quicktime is constructed and implemented in part one very useful.

Like Quicktime 4 itself, however, there are some drawbacks with this book. Strangely, there is no mention of the integration of Quicktime with Macromedia's widely used Director application and nothing on the exciting possibilities of using Quicktime with Macromedia's excellent Flash 4. Although the CD included with the book does contain source code and demonstration programmes which show off the capabilities of Quicktime, strangely, it doesn't contain Quicktime itself, so you'll need to download Quicktime 4 [free] fromhttp://www.apple.com/quicktime/and here's where the major problems arise. Downloading has been proving difficult or well nigh impossible from the main Apple site, or even from local mirrors. A nuisance for developers, but a commercial disaster for Apple as web authors aren't going to use the technology, if the general public can't access the necessary 'plug-in'.