Fix for TIFFs and Quicktime

[Robert Sullivan]

In our last episode, I reported that installing AlternaTIFF (available from
<http://www.mieweb.com/alternatiff>) fixed the problem of viewing TIFF images
from the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office when QuickTime is installed.

This was true, but one of my coworkers ran into problems viewing documents from
our state library, which are also stored as TIFFs, e.g.

<http://nysdocs.nysed.gov/scandocs1.asp?oclc=15369732>

This also offers the option of viewing the document as a GIF, *but* unless you
look at the information page which says the GIFs are in a format which Internet
Explorer can't read (??), you will wait for a very long time without knowing
why it doesn't work.

Anyhow, I was getting tired of all this and decided to look for a solution
which would allow us to keep QuickTime but view the images.  I thought the Wang
Imaging accessory included with Windows might do it, but it didn't like the
USPTO files.  Finally, I did two fresh NT installs and took snapshots of the
Registry along the way.

(Drum roll please...)

If you delete this key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Plugins\Extension\.DImg

and change the value of

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Plugins\MIME\image/tiff
\Extension

to ".tif"

and add these values (which were deleted by installing QuickTime) to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Plugins\Extension\.tif

Content Type (REG_SZ) image/tiff

Location (REG_SZ) C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\Plugins\npzzatif.dll

it works.  Or so it appears on the PC I am currently vivisecting.  Further
QuickTime information is available at

<http://www.dot.co.pima.az.us/gis/webdev/tiff.htm>

which also says that RealDownload and similar software may prevent you from
viewing TIFFs properly.

Hope this helps someone!

Bob Sullivan                               scp_sulli at sals.edu
Schenectady County Public Library (NY)     http://www.scpl.org