Lake of the Woods Control Board Site Tips & Tricks
 

  
 
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1.0  Browser Settings

These are suggestions on how to make your browser behave better with our website.


1.1  General Settings

We've optimized our website to be viewed at a screen resolution of 800x600 or larger, but with the combined power of HTML and Web Browsers the site should be viewable by any browser on any platform (including PDAs and Cell Phones) with only the usual expected differences.


1.2  Font/Text Size Settings

Our pages were designed to be viewed in "Medium" text size. To adjust the Text Size in your browser, do the following:
BrowserOption/Command
Internet Explorer 4Select "View|Font|Text Size|Medium" from the Menu
Internet Explorer 5/6Select "View|Text Size|Medium" from the Menu
NetscapePress Ctrl-] or Ctrl-[ until the text on the left-hand side of the main page fits within the blue colour band


1.3  Browser Printer Margin Settings

In Internet Explorer, we've found that setting all margins to 12.5 mm (0.5 inches) helps when printing pages from the browser. Larger margins would be useful if planning to place the pages in a binder, etc. but we generally don't do that from a browser. To set your Internet Explorer's page margins, go to the "File" menu and then select "Page Setup...".


1.4  Increase Your Browser's Vertical Real-estate

You can increase your vertical viewing area in your browser by removing (or simply moving) extraneous toolbars, etc.
The following are some suggestions:
Internet Explorer 6, 800x600 Resolution, "Normal" Toolbars

Now, do the following:
  1. Change the size of the Toolbar buttons (From the Internet Explorer menu, select "View" then "Toolbars" then "Customize..."
    For "Icon options" choose "Small Icons". For "Text Options" choose "No Text Labels" or "Selective Text on Right".
    And you may want to remove a few buttons in the "current toolbar buttons" list.
  2. Move the "Links" toolbar to the right side of the "Standard Toolbar" (you may have to turn off "Lock Toolbars" in "View|Toolbars" in the menu)
    This is assuming your "Links" toolbar doesn't have that many items (eliminate the items you don't use or eliminate the "Links" toolbar altogether)
    The Links toolbar can be VERY useful in that it can hold your most favourite of favourites
  3. Move the "Address" bar to the right beside the Internet Explorer menu (since this is unused space anyway)
    Yes, you'll have less space to see Web Addresses but, for the most part, that shouldn't really matter as you can always put the mouse in the address box and scroll over to the right to see more of what's there, if necessary. Well-behaved addresses won't be very long and the other long ones are often full of information that we don't need to see anyway.
After the above changes
NOTE: That's a gain of 70 pixels in browser vertical real estate
The lower the screen resolution the more significant 70 pixels will be
(compare the amount of space under "Related Web Sites" on the left in the "Before" and "After" pictures to see how significant this can be)

2.0  Adobe Acrobat Reader

2.1  Files Requiring Acrobat Reader

 Whenever you see either of the two images on the left it means the file (or "link" the image is associated with) is a "Portable Document Format" or "PDF" file, the format of which was created by Adobe Software. These items require Adobe Acrobat Reader (version 3 or higher) to view them. If you do not have Acrobat Reader, it is available free from Adobe Software. In some browsers you may have to select the desired item with the right mouse button to save the file on your computer rather than view it online ("Save Target As..." in Internet Explorer; "Save Link As..." in Netscape).


2.2  Current Version Required

We've designed our PDF documents for Acrobat Reader version 3.0 or higher (they are "distilled" by Acrobat 4.0 with compatibility set to "Acrobat 3.0").


2.3  Getting Acrobat reader

You can click here to get the Adobe Acrobat Reader (it's free!!!).  Please note that this takes you to the main Adobe Acrobat Reader page.  


2.4  Various Acrobat Reader Settings

In File|Preferences|General turn on "Use Greek Text Below 4 Pixels". This is because the fonts on some of the graphs are pretty tiny and if this setting is left at the default of 6, they may view as rectangles only (but they'll still print okay).
When using Acrobat 6.0, set magnification to 118% or greater to make grids on the graphs visible.


2.5  Print with "Fit to Page" OFF

We have found that turning "Fit to Page" OFF on the Print Dialog screen helps to keep portions of our documents from becoming skewed.
NOTE: This is called "Fit to Page" in Acrobat Reader 4.0; in Acrobat Reader 5.0, it's found in the "Copies And Adjustments" box and is split into two options: "Shrink oversized pages ..." and "Expand small pages ..."


2.6  Printing margins are "askew"

We have also found that some printers, probably due to their rubber catch-wheels, may tend to start printing a few millimetres higher or lower than where the PDF is designed to print. The solution to this, we have found, is to create a custom page size (in the local computer's printer setup software, if possible -- the PDF is still 8.5x11) that is slightly larger than the page it was designed for (11.313 inches instead of 11 inches). This causes the printer to think the page is a little bigger and therefore it centres the output for the new page size.


2.7  How to print PDF files while viewing them in your Web Browser

It's been our experience that to print PDF files while viewing them in your browser (i.e. "Acrobat Reader" is used as a browser "Plug-In"), it helps if you use the plug-in's print button (i.e. the far-left button on the Acrobat toolbar that is inserted when viewing PDFs online). Using the browser's "Print" button will likely give erroneous results (Internet Explorer 6 and the Acrobat Reader plugin appear to behave well together, though).


Click here for more on Troubleshooting Acrobat printing problems

3.0  Miscellaneous Tips

3.1  Outlook Express doesn't allow/show/open PDF attachments

 The following link:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;291387
mentions (among other things) trying this to allow PDFs as attachments in Outlook Express:

  1. From the "Start" menu, open "Control Panel" and then "Folder Options"
  2. From the "File Types" tab, select "PDF" (Adobe Acrobat Document) from the "Registered File Types" list
  3. Click "Advanced" and then turn OFF "Confirm open after download"
Also, you need to add some items to the registry (via the regedit program -- be careful what you do here)
(see this link: http://tools.supportforyourpc.com/get_article.asp?aid=1115)
  1. From the "Start" menu, select "Run..." and type "regedit" in the "Open" box and click "OK"
  2. Navigate to the following location:
    "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\UnSafeFiles"
  3. Under "UnSafeFiles", there should be two more branches, "Include" and "Exclude", allowing you to customize the list.
         (If they don't exist, you should create them by (while "UnSafeFiles" is selected) choosing "Edit|New|Key" from regedit's menu)
  4. I'm not sure, in their parlance, if you want to "Include" or "Exclude" files at this point but I would suggest go with "Exclude" and add a new key under "Exclude" and call it ".pdf". Apparently, that's all there is to it.


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