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Introduction |
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Technical |
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Interior Paint |
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Media |
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Software Cost Analysis |
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Navigate |
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Contact |
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DavePropst.com / Navigate / Site Help / Introduction The comments on this page may be a case of severely overstating the obvious, but are offered nonetheless in the event that any find navigation of this website confusing. Although other browsers may work without trouble, this website has been 'debugged' only for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or newer. 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 various pages in the Technical section. 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 to the reader where in the menu structure he currently is. 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 photos present. Organization The website (and menu) is currently divided into five sections:
Additional to this structure of typical web pages are the technical articles and photo albums. These are documents that open in their own windows separate from the main website. Technical Articles Most of the in-depth information at this website is presented in documents that are written as articles. These articles, being of greater length than is generally acceptable for a typical web page, contain multiple full-size photos and lengthy, detailed discussion of the topic at hand. These documents do take time to download because of the numerous large photos included. Thumbnail images linked to separately opening photos are not used in these documents. The assumption is that anyone reading the articles will invariably want to look at all photos and would find a multitude of thumbnail images/links to be a time-consuming nuisance. Additionally, in most cases the narratives refer to individual photos and/or details in those photos. This requires that the photos be placed at specific places within a narrative. Therefore, the concept is to open the document and begin reading while the images are loading. If any image fails to load, right click in its outline box and select 'Show Picture'. The articles 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. 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. If a very small monitor or lower resolution 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. Its primary advantage is that it gets the browser's icons, tool bars and menu structure out the way when large photos of cool stuff and/or multiple paragraphs of text are being viewed. Photo Albums Photo Albums are collections of photos of items of interest-- usually motor racing related. As with the technical articles, all albums open in a separate browser window and no thumbnail images are used in the albums. If any image fails to load, simply right-click on the red 'X' or anywhere inside the box outline and select the 'Show Picture' option. Photo albums are designed for viewing with a minimum video setting of 1024x768. Display quality of photos in albums is best if browser zoom level setting is left at 'Normal' or '100%'. If 1024x768 or lower resolution is being used with browser at 100% zoom level, browser full screen mode must be used in order to display entire images without the need for vertical scrolling. Full-screen mode can be toggled on/off in most browsers by repeatedly pressing the F11 key. Additionally it may be necessary to close the browser 'Explorer Bar(s)' depending on which version of Internet Explorer is in use. This is achieved by un-checking options in the 'View' section of the Explorer menu. Viewing these photos at video settings lower than 1024x768 will likely result in reduced image quality and/or require horizontal and vertical scrolling. It is important that the computer's video resolution setting in use provides the correct aspect ratio for the computer monitor being used. That is, a round circle (Circle.jpg) should appear perfectly round instead of oval-shaped on the monitor. Album photos are edited for viewing at a computer monitor gamma setting of 2.2. At the risk of even greater 'over-simplifying', gamma setting has to do with the lightness/darkness of the image. If a monitor is adjusted to something other than the 2.2 value, much of the detail in a photo may not be visible on the monitor. If gamma value of the monitor is unknown, a little adjusting of monitor/video card controls may bring up more image detail by a surprising amount. |
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This column in green-colored text 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.
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Copyright © 2002 - 2009 Dave Propst Text and images by Dave Propst. All rights reserved. |
