Frequently Asked Questions About the Site
Here are some technical explainations to this site's development:
What browsers will display the site?
The site has only been thoroughly tested in Internet Explorer(IE) 5.5+ and Netscape(NS) 7.1. I have received screenshots that suggest the layout and graphics appear nearly the same in IE5+, Safari 1.2, Mozilla FireFox 0.8, and Opera 7.3. The site will not function in IE4 or NS4 unless JavaScript and CSS is disabled, in otherwords run like a text based browser.
Why JavaScript?
The short answer is because MicroSoft will not fully support W3C's recommendations. The longer answer is I am trying to implement a cross-browser compatible site.
Apologies again if custom scrolling does not work in your browser. The problem arose when JavaScript had to be implemented with the collapsible navigation in IE. In order for the links to be accessible above the text in NS the text had to be 'hidden', which forced a script to be written to scroll the text. Initially cutom scrolling was going to be used as an additional feature, but with many hours invested in the script it has not been determined how to access external CSS properties in every browser. Until this solution is discovered JavaScript will need to be disabled.
However, this site was designed without JavaScript initially, thus the site can be viewed without it.
Why CSS?
CSS is the future of web authoring, along with XML and XSL technologies. W3C is an organization that creates several recommendations in order to help standardize web authoring. CSS is one of those recommendations and has deprecated many style tags that have been used in the past, thus making it easier to read and write mark up. This has allowed stylizing mark up pages a much more richer and dynamic experience.
This site can be viewed without CSS, so if your browser doesn't support it, you can still navigate and read all the site content.
How do you scroll with JavaScript enabled?
The custom scroll bar on the right of the content is divided up into five sections:
Refresh: the circlular button with the curved arrow can be clicked with the mouse to return the content back to the top and reset the scroll speed to default.
Scroll Up: the square button with the up arrow can be hovered with the cursor to scroll the text up the same as the browser's vertical scroll bar.
Decrease Speed: the top half of the rectangular bar can be clicked with the mouse to decrease the scrolling speed. The speed can be adjusted up to five times with additional clicks.
Increase Speed: the bottom half of the rectangular bar can be clicked with the mouse to increase the scrolling speed. The speed can be adjusted up to five times with additional clicks.
Scroll Down: the square button with the down arrow can be hovered with the cursor to scroll the text down the same as the browser's vertical scroll bar.
Netscape 6+, and most likely all browsers using the Gecko Engine, calculate CSS properties differently than Internet Explorer. Thus, you'll find that scrolling may seem "bumpy" in NS compared to IE. A search for an optimized solution will continue and apologies for the inconvenience.
This type of scolling is not necessary, and normal scrollbars can be used by disabling JavaScript. The purpose of the scroll bar is explained above, but it is also designed to emulate scrolling often seen in Flash sites. The idea was to try and make the transition from the XHTML site to a future Flash site as seamless as possible.
Why do your graphics get pixelated?
The site is designed to be accessible. This means, among other things, that the site must be viewable without JavaScript, that it uses semantic mark up and a 'skip navigation' is provided for text based browsers and screenreaders, and is able to be viewed at any resolution. This site does all of these things and a little more. To make the site viewable in any resolution it was designed using relative units rather than pixels. In this case 'em' which is used with font sizes, so as the user changes the text size in their browser the graphics shrink or expand with the text. Unfortunatly, even modern browsers use simple scaling algorithms, so the graphics get pixelated. The graphics look best with text size 'medium' or '100%'.
Can I email you if I have problems with the site?
Please do! There hasn't been the time or the resources to fully test this site, so if you have any problems contact us with your browser and resolution as well. Send your email here, and please include BGC in the subject or else it will get filtered.
