DAVEPROPST.COM - Help Page


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Technical
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Media
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DavePropst.com / Navigate / Site Help /

Menus and Links

The recommended sequence for reading pages starts with the Homepage, follows with System Preview and Shop Overview in the Introduction section, and then proceeds to the System page in the Technical section. After these pages are read there's no need to follow any particular order for the remainder of the website.

A very basic navigation structure with conventional color-coding is used. The left-side column contains the navigation menu in blue text. Menu items and hyperlinks that lead to other pages will turn red when the mouse pointer passes over them. After menu items or other hyperlinks are visited, their link text will change color from blue to purple. The middle column of a page always contains the main narrative (body text) for that page. This is in black text. The right hand column contains navigation help or miscellaneous notes in green text.

At the top of the center column but below the black horizontal line is the menu path of the web page currently being viewed. This is in light gray text. This path label identifies where one is in the menu structure.

If the web browser window width is resized by dragging with the mouse, the body text width will automatically compensate to some degree. This means that on most sizes of monitors with most video settings, the text of the web pages can be read without horizontal scrolling. It also is possible to use this feature to adjust width of the center column of text to whatever the reader's preference is regardless of any pictures present.

Organization

The website (and menu) is currently divided into four sections:

Introduction - Preview of the shop and equipment.
Technical - Detailed, in-depth information about tools, equipment and methods. Categorized by subject.
Media - Items of entertainment and reference value such as software and literature recommendations, photo galleries, etc.
Navigate - Homepage and site navigation related info.

Additional to this network of typical web pages are the technical articles and the photo albums. These are documents that open in their own windows separate from the base website.

Technical Articles

Most of the in-depth information at this website is presented in documents that are/were originally written as articles and newsletters. These articles, being of greater length than is generally acceptable for a typical web page, contain multiple full-size pictures and lengthy, detailed discussion of the topic at hand without the interruption of menus and other distractions.

These documents do take time to download because of the numerous large pictures included. Thumbnail images linked to separately opening pictures are never used in these documents. The assumption is that anyone reading the articles will invariably want to look at all pictures and would find a multitude of thumbnail images/links to be a nuisance. Additionally, in most cases the narratives refer to individual pictures and/or details in those pictures. This requires that the pictures be placed at specific places within a narrative. The concept is to open the document and begin reading while the images are loading. If any image(s) fails to load, right click in its outline box and select 'Show Picture'.

The documents are listed chronologically on the Literature page in the MEDIA section. More importantly they are cross-referenced by subject in the various pages of the TECHNICAL section. They are opened by clicking on hyperlinks appearing in the individual web pages in those sections of the menu. When these hyperlinks in underlined blue text are clicked, the appropriate document will open in a separate window uncluttered by the website menu, banner photo, etc. Since the documents open in their own windows, it is possible to simultaneously refer to both the website and one or more of the articles.

If a small monitor or video setting is being used, viewing the technical documents in full screen mode may be a good choice. This web browser mode is turned on and off by pressing the F11 key. (Try it now if you've never used it.) Its primary advantage is that it gets the browser's icons, tool bars and menu structure out the way when large pictures of cool stuff are being viewed.

Just as is the case with the web pages, these separate windows in which the articles open can be resized with the mouse to adjust the text line width to one's reading preferences without having to use browser scroll bars. However, since the tech articles contain much larger pictures than the website pages it is helpful to combine the full screen mode with the resized window. Meaning, read text in the resized window but hit the F11 key when looking at a picture. Then hit the F11 key once again to return to the resized window.

Photo Albums

Photo Albums are collections of larger size pictures of items of interest-- usually motor racing related. Casual readers may not want to deal with the large downloads. These albums are, for the most part, offered for serious race fans.

As with tech articles no thumbnails are ever used in the albums. All albums open in a separate browser window.

These albums are designed for use with Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or newer and only full screen browser setting (toggled on/off by repeatedly pressing the F11 key) with Explorer bar closed (from Explorer menu, go to File/View then uncheck the existing checkmark). Other browsers may well work but are not included in our website testing.

Viewing Photo Album images at video settings of 800x600 or less will likely result in reduced image quality and will require horizontal scrolling. The file size, image size, jpg compression, image quality trade-offs are optimized for video at 1024x768 regardless of monitor size. If another video setting is regularly used the recommendation is to temporarily change the video to 1024x768 for viewing this album, then return to the preferred setting after viewing is finished. If any image(s) fails to load simply right-click on the red 'X' or anywhere inside the box outline and select the 'Show Picture' option.

The comments on this page explain how to best view this website. Even though reading a site help page may seem a boring waste of time, doing so will prove helpful.

This column appears on most pages and contains navigation help and other notes about the website. This column does not appear in Technical Article or Photo Album documents.