The recently-launched IFDB has a browser-plug-in mechanism to enable Windows users a one-step “play now” button to download an interpreter and start playing many of the games on the IF archive.
That doesn’t mean that Mac users are out of luck, though. Andrew Hunter announced today a new version of the multi-format interpreter Zoom. With Zoom, you can
- Use the “Find more” button to go browse IFDB. If you already have selected a game file in your Zoom window, it will look up the same game at IFDB, allowing you to read reviews and find walkthroughs, or use IFDB’s recommendation features to locate other games similar to the one you’ve been playing.
- Download and start new games with a single click.
- Automatically search for new interpreter plug-ins for Zoom, increasing its compatibility with minimal user upkeep. This new version adds SCARE to the Zoom interpreter set, so that Zoom is now able to play z-code, Glulx, TADS 2 and 3, Hugo, and Adrift games.
Lots of fun and very elegant.
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 
This is really a great thing. The IF community is comparatively small, and I think that is a main reason why all innovations in IF are sophisticated and lead to games that really have intellectual and cultural appeal. You could say that the IF community is elitarist. But it is so not by manual selection of its members. The subject (IF games) is so far away from mainstream that usually only the intellectually or culturally interested really get into it.
I disagree that the IF community is not manually separated from the mainstream gaming and literary communities, though it is probably not quite on purpose. We are still generally lacking native executable files, which is a _major_ deterrent to anyone who is not convinced he/she is going to like IF, and quite possibly even to those who do not. This is no new idea, of course, but has surprisingly never been remedied.