Gateway to TTTB

TwelveToneToyBox Preliminary Page
TwelveToneToyBox is a music education toy/tool which uses colors, sounds, and animations to make basic dodecaphonic ideas vivid. It looks like many people visit this applet, but almost nobody sends me any remarks in e-mail. There are links for that here and on the applet page proper! You can see the kudos won by this applet by clicking here.--Matt
The following minimum capabilities are strongly recommended for viewing the applet: *Java browser audio capability high video: big enough to see the rectangle below (625 width, 400 height) in 16-bit color variable-size font technology with Helvetica and Times fonts or good font substitution (TrueType, PostScript, and ATM can all handle this) fast processor lots of memory, and, where applicable, a large memory partition for your browser (e.g. in the GetInfo box in the Mac Finder) Fast network connection (you will be downloading over 40 Java class files, 12 audio files, and 19 pictures into your Java environment) a sense of wonder**

Bookmark this page! and choose carefully, as you'll have to restart your browser to try the other option. Matthew H. Fields
start applet using high sounds	start applet using low sounds
Hit count since 2 April 1997:
Notes
I'm upgrading to Netscape 4.x. I've just tested the applet on Netscape Navigator 4.03 on Win95, and I have the following recommendations. Take down on paper somewhere everything absolutely essential about your Netscape installation, like your server addresses, mail addresses, etc. De-install your previous version of Navigator, and completely delete all its files, and (on appropriate OS's) comment out settings for CLASSPATH in your startup file (AutoExec.Bat under Windows), before running the installer for 4.03. Otherwise you may get a mixture of client classes from different versions of Navigator. My fancy Unix workstation bombs on the applet. Check your Java console for X11 exceptions associated with "setFont". TTTB calls for many different computed sizes of Helvetica which your host system software must supply. Try using an X-windows manager with PostScript fonts or TrueType. The applet is slow. Sorry. Java is an emerging technology, and even by today's standards it's a slow memory hog. Macintosh System 7 seems to run the applet slower than Windows 95, even on faster machines, and I suspect this means that MacOS 7's overall use of time is suboptimal. The applet uses both lock coordination (for pre-emptive multitasking environments like Win95 and Linux) and explicit process yielding (for co-operative multitasking environments like MacOS and Solaris), and in theory it should run fine on any of them. I've personally tested it successfully only under MacOS and Win95. I can't run two instances of the applet in two browser windows. This is a deliberate design choice to get around the slowness of Java. TTTB uses many workarounds to run faster in less memory. Allowing multiple instances would require a slower design that would use much more memory. Your system software might also fail, if two instances of TTTB were to try to play sound at the same time. I left the TTTB page and returned to it and got an error. Your browser wanted to create a second instance of TTTB. See the previous paragraph. I don't like having to come back and start over again to load the other sound set. The sounds take up a lot of memory, and I'm trying to conserve on that. I thought of downloading both sets and giving you a button to choose which set to use after the applet is up and running, but the memory requirements of that would further reduce the number of machines on which TTTB would even load. Try the high sounds first, and if the applet works O.K. that way, try to be satisfied with that, okay? I downloaded the ZIP file and unzipped it. Now Microsoft Internet Explorer bombs on the applet when I run it from my hard drive. This is a known bug in the security module in MS IE. MS IE originally shipped with a security hole that allowed Javascript and Java from the net to access the user's whole hard drive. When MS plugged this security hole, they also prevented local Java applets from reading graphics and sound files. Recommended fixes include running the applet off the net if possible and affordable, or running it in a different browser. Another option might be to install a web server (like Microsoft's free one) on your machine and serve the page up to yourself. Whether you can do this at home with your modem turned off I have no idea---would somebody let me know? Thanks. The sounds stutter. This is a timing and resource management issue in most current versions of Java 1.0, and probably is not the fault of your computer, audio equipment, etc. I understand that market plans call for the opening and inclusion of Headspace brand audio technology in version 1.2 of Java; when that is available, I'd like to rebuild TTTB to take advantage of it. One of its advantages will be a fix for the stutter; another advantage will be the availability of a tolerable palette of different timbres without the need to download sound files. It might be fun to attach timbres to the colors on screen. Grants to seriously pursue this development are welcome. It still won't run. If you can copy the full contents of a Java console to an e-mailer and mail it to me, maybe I can fix it. Some other quirk occurs. If you inform me, perhaps I can help.