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| Pop-up
Advertising Blockers There are no pop-up ads on this site. If you
click on buttons or links and find that the expected page does not open, you
may need to adjust your pop-up blocker settings to allow new browser windows
to be opened. If this makes your use of the site inconvenient, please
bring this problem to our attention.
This website opens new
windows in many situations, such as to browse the website of one organization
of potential interest without losing the current window, such as a directory
of multiple organizations in a region, state, or specialty of
interest. This even makes it easy to directly compare similar content
on such sites in multiple windows.
Unfortunately, some programs which block pop-up
advertising may also block this normal process of opening two or more
browser windows intentionally. |
You should see a button above which links just
like this to our global Contacts
page. This website
design uses many "hover buttons" such as the above. These are very
simple and standardized scripts which make hyperlinks easier to recognize
and use at a glance.
Unfortunately, some security programs may misinterpret
this normal type of hyperlink as a script which should be blocked simply
because they don't really differentiate such scripts. If this happens
to you, please check your security settings or let us know, as we are trying
to assess whether this potential problem is actually inconveniencing anyone
we serve.
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Display Settings
(see how to change, below)
This website was designed for use with high resolution display settings,
rather than for backwards compatibility with older standards. This was
designed as a service to a very selective group of a few thousand top
executives and professional service providers, rather than to appeal to the
larger population of general Internet users who may be using older
technologies.
For best results, use 1280x1024, 1280x800, or at least 1152x864 or higher
screen resolution settings.
These are common defaults among new computers used for business purposes,
but not among older systems or personal ones. We work at 1600x1200,
but this resolution will not yet be available on many business systems.
At display settings below 1024x768, many of the pages will require
scrolling to the right, as well as down, to see all of the content.
At 800x600, the design obviously becomes inconvenient because of the
considerable scrolling involved, but this was a tradeoff to provide tabular
content. We estimated that most of our users would be working at high
resolution display settings, and thus would not face this problem.
If this proves to be inconvenient,
please let us know so that we can consider this in the future redesign
of the website. If we don't hear from you, we won't know that our
design choice has been inconvenient.
If any of the content doesn't fit the width of the full display
(disappearing off the screen to the right), you may also want to try changing from a full display
to a window which is almost the size of the full display. This should
cause most text content to wrap within the available width of the browser window,
regardless of width.
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Browser
This website
was designed and tested for use with Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0, but as far
as we know from minimal testing with Netscape or earlier versions, those should also work fine.
We have tried to avoid features which might present compatibility problems.
If significant problems are encountered, please send us an explanation.
Older browsers and other browsers should work, although a few minor features may not
function, such as tips explaining "hotspot" links on graphics or maps. |
| Multiple Windows
We
deliberately designed some of the pages, and especially the tables of
external website links to service providers or other resources, to
open separate browser windows for the linked content. For example,
this makes it easy for investors and advisors to compare information between
the websites of multiple areas of interest.
Although we realize that a proliferation of such windows may sometimes be
a nuisance, we felt that this makes it easier for users to follow such links
and then find their way quickly back again to where they were by simply
closing such additional windows (rather than going "Back" repeatedly, since
such windows may well lead to many other pages of interesting content, or
lists of links to other relevant websites).
In some cases, we felt that the ability to have multiple windows on the
desktop would prove to be a helpful feature - such as to have a local map
open at the same time as the description of an area, or to have descriptions
of two areas open in parallel for comparison of content. Suggestions for improvement are always welcome. |
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Changing Display Settings
in Windows Save any open work in case any problem develops which would
cause the computer to be restarted (unlikely, but better safe than sorry).
Right click on the open Windows "desktop" (away from all icons)
Select "Properties" (to show the "Display Properties" window).
Select the "Settings" tab.
Adjust the screen resolution to a high setting (1280x800 or higher).
You may find that you need to adjust your font settings as well, using the
"Appearance" tab, to have larger fonts (i.e., large fonts at high resolution
rather than small fonts as may be used at low resolutions). Small
fonts at high resolution may resemble contract legalese.
If in doubt, refer to your own computer's instructions or "Help" pages. |
Text Search and Queries
The "Search" button does not work properly at this time because of a problem
with the current web hosting service, which has removed some software which
is necessary for this feature to work. That also explains why we have
not included some obvious potential database query applications, which may
be added in the future.
For now, the "Shortcuts" button should serve that purpose fairly well.
Within large pages, the usual "Find" feature (Ctrl-F) should work, such
as to find a city name in a long list of area representatives for a region.
We have been told that the necessary software will be revised and
reinstalled at some point, once some security issues are addressed. If
so, the search should then work as designed. If not, we may re-host
the site elsewhere so that we can offer additional features as planned.
Web Search Engines A few users have commented that it was a little
difficult to find this website through the usual search engines.
Please recognize that this is, in part, deliberate. This is not a
mass-market service, but rather a very specialized niche business. We
want to make it easy for our intended users to find this website, but don't
want to attract others. We therefore try to manage our visibility
through the search engines, rather than maximize it, and promote this
website directly within our market. We are always interested in
feedback about how users found us, and how we can make that process
easier for others in the future. |
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Add our site search tool to your iGoogle page
