Hello Tracker users,

Tracker 4.75 installers for Windows, Mac and Linux are now available from both the Tracker home page (http://www.cabrillo.edu/~dbrown/tracker/) and (soon) ComPADRE (http://www.opensourcephysics.org/items/detail.cfm?ID=7365).

This new version has some HUGE new features that both you and your students will love:

1. New Tracker ZIP files. In one step you can export a zip file with extension .trz that contains an entire Tracker experiment, including tracker file, video and HTML documentation. It looks and acts just like a .trk file (opens in Tracker with a double-click, etc) but is completely self-contained, self-documenting and portable. Tracker ZIPs work great with the improved Digital Library Browser (see below), and they are the perfect way for students to turn in and/or share Tracker-based lab reports and homework projects. Tip: when exporting Tracker ZIPs use JPEG images as your output video format--they can be opened in Tracker even without a video engine!

2. Greatly improved Digital Library Browser. Browse Tracker ZIPs to see descriptions and thumbnail images of experiments and videos. Search for resources by name, author and keywords. Browse shared web collections in the Shared Library. Share your own web collections just by uploading the resource files and a simple PHP script file (available from the Tracker web site) to your server!

For more information about these features please read the Tracker Help sections Tracker ZIP Files and Digital Library Browser.

Xuggle Note: Tracker is reverting to the original Xuggle video engine (version 3.4) due to serious bugs in Xuggle 5.4 that I have not been able to fix. Please upgrade your Xuggle engine when you run the installer. QuickTime is also supported on Windows and OSX, of course.

Thank you! Doug