TECHNICAL

My apologies to Netscape users, I was a Netscape groupie and for many years have tried to avoid the pervasiveness of Microsoft however Bill Gates has finally overwhelmed me. This web site is currently being produced using MS FrontPage 2002 which includes features such as "hover buttons" and "Photo Gallery" which do not function with Netscape. Unfortunately I haven't got the time to maintain this website in native HTML. As a matter of interest approximately 84% of unique visitors to this website use Internet Explorer 5 or 6.

I have tried to design these pages for a computer monitor set at a resolution of 800 x 600, I've primarily formatted the type in 10 pt in deference to all those with failing eyesight including yours truly and have tended to keep the site essentially textual to minimise downloading speeds.

If you want to see some basic statistics on who visits this web site then click on this hyperlink.

I have advised on the home page that in these early web site development days that I am continually re-organising hyperlinks, re-structuring web pages, re-naming files etc. so if a link doesn't appear to work or appears to be outdated (which is more likely to occur with the items like the address list) then click on the REFRESH (Internet Explorer) or RELOAD (Netscape Navigator) button in the toolbar at the top of the browser window.

There is another reason why it doesn't hurt to REFRESH or RELOAD the pages from time to time and this is because computer browser programs store recently viewed web pages on their hard drive to speed up the viewing process, this is known as being stored in "cache memory", this cached data is primarily stored on the hard drive of your computer and may also be cached on your ISP's proxy server.

The reason behind this "caching of data" is that the programmers work on the basis that a viewer is likely to re-visit a recent viewed page and by storing these recently viewed pages on the hard drive in "cache" the computer can quickly re-load them (from the hard drive) if you re-visit the page as opposed to again downloading the page from the server (this is the computer that hosts/stores the web site which in our case is located in the USA).

The downside to this is if you re-visit a page and you haven't been viewing any other sites between the initial and subsequent visits (which has the effect of flushing out the cached data and replacing it with data from the last site visited) then you can end up viewing a page that is outdated if I have amended the subject page during that intervening period although generally speaking a browser should be set to check if cached data has been changed before using it.

If any of my technical advice is incorrect then please advise me. Any other comments or advice in regards to this website will also be appreciated but bear in mind that I'm a layman in regards IT so be gentle with me, I bruise easily ... 

OTHER

• My hardware and software

• A short spiel on digital images, formats, resolution, etc.

• Smilies - Have you every received an e-mail which may contain a collection of keystrokes like    :-)    or    :-( or    <:-)    and wondered what they are all about, they are known as "smilies" and to see a list of them click here.

[This page last updated 15/05/2003] 

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