Viewing Hints

      The Rare Breeds Website has been designed to minimise viewing problems – it does not use Java or Javascript, does not need any plugins, and for most monitors the text size will adjust automatically.

      However, some viewers do experience difficulties, almost always due to the way their computer is set up or through not being familiar with the features on their browsers. The most common problems and solutions are as follows (because computers and browsers vary so greatly, only general guidelines are given here):

A webpage is not up-to-date. This is particularly the case with the Webmart, News and Directory pages which are frequently updated. The problem is that the viewer’s computer has been set to “cache” (that is, store) recently visited website pages, and instead of downloading the latest version it simply recalls a previous version held in its files.

Top left corner of Internet Explorer browser. "Refresh" is the pair of curved arrows in the third row, and “View” is in the second row.

      The simple answer to this is to click on “Refresh” or “Reload” (often indicated by curved arrows and usually found near the top left hand corner of the screen) or press F5 on the keyboard while the computer is on line. On some browsers pressing the Ctrl key and the R key at the same time will do the same thing.

      However, this does not always work, and may be necessary to force the browser to get the latest version from the Internet. To do this, try holding down the Ctrl or Shift key (or Option key on Macintosh browsers) while clicking on Refresh or Reload (depending on the type of browser you have) or press down the Ctrl key and the F5 key at the same time. As you can see, there is little consistency amongst browsers and you may have to experiment.

Text is too small to read easily. This problem occurs mostly with high definition monitors/screens (1400 x 1050 pixels and above) and it probably means that the operating system has not been adjusted appropriately.

      For most viewing, high-resolution monitors should be set to Large Size text (from the Control Panel). If this is not the problem, try increasing the size on the browser itself. On most browsers (e.g. Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox) this adjustment can be made by clicking on View (again usually near the top left of the screen) then Text Size on the drop-down menu (on Opera it is View then Zoom). This should give you a selection of sizes to choose from. Unfortunately, choosing a large (or small) size can result in a reduction in quality – ironically, a high definition monitor is generally less satisfactory than a standard resolution monitor, and it will usually show illustrations smaller than they need be.

Finding a word or phrase on a webpage. Use Ctrl+F (hold down the Ctrl key while pressing the F key) to activate the “Find” facility if you want to locate a particular word on a webpage – for instance, if you want to find a certain breed on Webmart.   Note that you can also use the Google search facility on the Home Page to search the whole website for a breed or topic.