At the bottom of each page is a footer (using smaller point sizes) that also contains links to main sections of the website. The footer area is not provided as the navigation method for the website even though it can be used for that purpose if you so choose. The main method of navigation is to click on menus or links displayed as part of the regular text. To go back, you can always click on the Back arrow in your browser or the title of the page (on our site).
The size of text that you see depends on the size of your monitor and the resolution that the monitor is set at. If the resolution is set too high for the size of the monitor, text may appear harder to read.
Our web pages are designed using the "default" size of text, the same as over 90% of web pages worldwide. So if the print of our website looks too small to you, there are four reasons why.
A discussion of the four reasons are listed in the order you should use to check your system out. The first reason shown may be all you need to change.
As you get older and your eyes weaken; you may wish to change the default viewing size. Surprisingly, a lot of people are not aware of this feature, nor take advantage of it.
To change the default viewing size in Internet Explorer, choose the View menu, and scroll down to the Text Size choice (Netscape has a similar feature: select the View menu and choose Text Zoom > 100% (or a smaller or larger size depending on your version)).
To change the default viewing size in Internet Explorer, choose the View menu, and scroll down to the Text Size choice.
Notice the choices range from Largest to Smallest. You should try these out and choose the size that you are most comfortable with.
If your browser has the Text Size button displayed, you can click the button to select the choices very easily:
Other browsers such as Avant Browser, Deepnet Explorer, and MaxThon have similar methods of changing the typeface size.
Netscape has a similar feature. In version 4.7, the choice is View, then Increase Font, or Decrease Font. You can also use the Ctrl key and the right bracket (]) key to increase, and the left bracket([) to decrease.
In versions 6 and 7, the choice changed to View, then Text Zoom. The current setting will be shown (in percent). You can specify the sizes to use in percent or you may increase or decrease your current settings. Ctrl and the plus(+) and minus(-) keys will allow you to increase and decrease the text size.Other browsers such as Opera, Mozilla, FireFox, Konquerer also have similar methods of changing the typeface size.
Tip: If you have the Microsoft Intellimouse or compatible "wheel" mouse, you can change the settings very easily by pressing the Ctrl key and rolling the wheel on the mouse. If the page has lots of text it may take a moment to update the display (don't roll back and forth unless the page updates instantly, otherwise the computer may hang).
The screen resolution you use depends on the size of monitor and the ability of your graphics card. If you have a large monitor you can get away with a higher resolution. If it makes text too small, you can change to a lower resolution.
How to adjust your monitor's screen resolution.
Windows 9x/Me/NT/2000 (similar in XP/2003)
- Go to your "desktop" and right click on an empty area. A shortcut menu will appear:
- Click on "Properties." The following dialog box will appear:
- Select the Settings tab at the top right. You should now see a display similar to this (The display shown here is what it looks like while making a Colors selection):
Notice that the type of Display is shown just below the monitor image. The example above shows "NEC MultiSync 3D". It also shows that the display graphics card is the "S3 Vision 868 PCI" model. If you have not set your graphics display model, the first time you make any changes, you will be asked to select the model.- Go to the "Colors" control to the left and just below the description for the "Display." Using the drop down box, you will see the choices available depending on your graphics card's abilities. Hopefully your graphics card has choices that allow you to have more than 256 colors. This setting works in conjunction with the screen size (labeled as Screen area) at the right. If you choose the maximum number of colors, your choices for maximum screen size will most likely be reduced. This is true for the majority of monitor/graphics adapters combinations.
Notice this example shows "High Color (16 bit)" and "True Color (32 bit)" choices. Some display cards have other choices (such as a 24 bit choice). The number of bits is an indication of how many colors your graphics card can display. The higher the number, the larger number of colors. This can affect shades and subtle colors that can occur in images made from photographs. Graphics images like the ones above often use very few colors in order to ensure they can be displayed properly on systems that do not have the ability to display a large number of colors. Most web page graphics are made with only 256 colors for this reason. Of course, photos can be the exception, although often photos have the number of colors reduced in order to load faster, but seldom if ever will a photo be reduced to 256 colors. Photographs in animated graphics (animated GIF files) are the most likly the only time you will see photographs reduced to 256 colors.- Change the setting to "High Color (16 bit)" or "True Color (32 bit)" settings. The True Color (32 bit) settings requires more memory than the High Color (16 bit) setting. You may wish to experiment and try both settings to see which setting you prefer. The smaller the monitor, the less you will notice the difference.
- The most important setting is the screen resolution. The choices available to you depend on your graphics card's abilities and the number of colors setting you chose in the above step.
If you have your monitor set to a higer resolution than 800x600, you can try reducing the resolution to see if it helps in readability. You can change the "Screen area" to 800 by 600 pixels by clicking and dragging the slide control to the left or right. Stop when the number changes to "800 by 600 pixels. If you move the slider too far to the right (higher resolutions) than what the number of colors choice you have set at the left allows, then the color choice to the left (the one just set in the prior step) will change (decrease) to allow the higher resolution. Moving the slider back to the left will not change it back. If this does happen, you will need to re-select the number of colors again.- Click "Apply." If you increased the resolution, you may get a warning to restart your computer otherwise some applications may not work properly and you may get a warning such as this:
Click O.K. The following box will appear: Click "OK" again.
- If you have already set your monitor before with Windows 9x/Me, the following box will appear. The image will be smaller if you are increasing your resolution. In this case, it may be difficult to read. If this is the case, then this indicates you are using a very small monitor. If you are using a small portable computer, a small monitor would be normal. If you are not using a handheld computer, check out the Ads section to see how little a larger monitor can be had for these days. Otherwise, click "yes."
If you have not adjusted your display settings previously with Windows 9x/Me, you will be prompted to specify the type of monitor you have. This is the same information as shown in step 3 above. A text entry field will appear on your screen if you need to take this step.- Using the scroll bars, choose the manufacturer and model number (or a similar model) of your monitor. Click on your manufacturer in the left window. Select the model number in the right window. Click "OK." The box shown in Step #5 will then appear and you should click "OK." The box from Step # 6 will appear; select "YES" if you wish to use the new settings.
Power Macintosh Users (different from OS X)
- Somewhere near the bottom of your screen or at least part way down on the left, you'll see a little gray shape that looks like a seatbelt buckle. If you click on it and drag it out, it will expose a "belt" of little pictures (also called "icons") with an even smaller arrow next to each one.
- Go to the monitor icon that has a black-and-white checkerboard pattern for the screen. This is where you can adjust the resolution.
- Click on the icon and HOLD YOUR FINGER DOWN ON THE MOUSE. You'll see a "menu" that lists different choices for screen resolution.
You will see some, if not all of the following:
- 640 x 480
- 800 x 600 -or- 832 x 624
- 1024 x 768
- (...and possibly higher resolutions)
If you now use a higher resolution than 800x600 (or 832x624), you can decrease the resolution, effectively making the text on the screen larger. Try the 800x600 setting to see if it improves readability by moving the mouse pointer over the setting (if the 800 x 600 choice is not available, bring your mouse pointer to "832 x 624" (to highlight it). This is the Macintosh version of "800 x 600" pixels for some systems).- Take your finger off the mouse. You've made the selection!
- Restart your computer to see the results.
This is most likely to be the case only if you are using a Macintosh or a Unix system. Even if you do not have the same typeface installed, browsers will usually do a substitution with a similar typeface. It is not possible to guarantee that we use a typeface that every system will have installed. To increase the chances that we use a typeface that you have, we use five common typefaces.
We specify Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, Tahoma, and Verdana typefaces, not necessarily in that order. Your browser will use the first one that you have installed, or it will choose the default typeface that you have set for your browser if you have not installed any of the typefaces listed. We have no control over the default typeface you have set for your browser.
We use Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, Tahoma, and Verdana in an attempt to cover as many systems as possible.
Arial, Tahoma, and Verdana are common typefaces in the Windows world. Geneva is also common in the Windows world but even more so in the Macintosh world. Helvetica is common on Unix systems. If you do not have one of these typefaces installed, you might want to install them; other websites use them heavily and it could improve your view of the other websites as well.
Regardless of the sizes of type used in our website, you may be able to use your own settings and override the values in your browser.
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Browsers are kept up to date by their manufacturers, occasionally having a new release within a few months of the last release. The later browsers correct bugs and enhance viewing. Regardless of your feeling for Microsoft, Internet Explorer works best for most users and for most websites. It is by far the most common browser is use today. Internet Explorer has settled down designwise, and has not had a major update for over a year (as of October 2004). The most common updates for Internet Explorer these days has been for critical security patches; other than that, it seems to have leveled out. Internet Explorer supports more features of the HTML standard, the CSS standards, and just about any other standard in use today on the web.
There are other browsers, in fact many of them. Most work pretty well, but most do not have the range of support for the standards as Internet Explorer. There are other browsers built on the Internet Explorer basic components and so they work almost the same as Internet Explorer. They generally have features not available in Internet Explorer. If you wish to try out other browsers, check out Avant Browser, Deepnet Explorer, and MaxThon.
Netscape can occasionally have problems and even crash on websites that Internet Explorer has no problem with at all. Netscape version 6 fixed some things, other bugs were not. The current version may be an improvement on these issues.
When a browser cannot properly understand the commands encountered, it should ignore the information, but crashing is an indication of poor quality control. Netscape crashed so often that we no longer recommend or even suggest it. We stopped testing it extensively around version 4.7x. We lost the incentive to test version 6 except for testing how it worked with some JavaScript we used. If you use Netscape and prefer it, then that is fine. Even when it works, it displays text formatted differently than we intended. For some reason, a paragraph can be shifted to the right appearing to be indented when it is formatted exactly as the paragraph above it. This causes readers to assume the text was indented as a subparagraph to the one above it, when in fact, that is not the case. We have no control over such display inconsistencies other than to recommend you try Internet Explorer.
To download the Internet Explorer version 6.0 (allows deleting of cookies, yea!), click on the icon:
Click the browser back arrow or use your (Internet Explorer) backspace key to return to the previous page, or click on the following links.
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