Browsers, Screen Size and Color Settings

The pages on this web site were designed for viewing using Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6.0 and Netscape version 7.0. Most pages should display correctly in older versions of MS Internet Explorer (version 5 series) and Netscape (version 4 series).

For best viewing choose 1024 x 768 monitor resolution with 64K or greater colors. If you are viewing in 640 x 480 resolution you will encounter pages that require right/left scrolling, and the pages and fonts may appear too large, depending upon your browser and monitor. A 16 or 256 color setting will not display images or backgrounds as intended.

Most JPG and GIF images have been compressed so that their respective pages won't take a long time to load. Many JPGs have been saved using progressive compression that enables decompression in stages for faster initial viewing of an image. We use animated GIFS and embedded background sound files sparingly - usually for special events, holidays or for kid's pages.

Most links are encoded to appear in a different color or gradation from the base font. The pages will look best if you set your browser's links option to "not underlined". This is true with other sites as well.

Fonts and Alignment

We use basic MS Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP default web fonts, usually with a MAC font as second choice. For example, this page was created with Arial as the base font with an optional Helvetica font for MAC PC users. In 2003, we implemented Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) on some pages to control layout of text and images.

Frames and Tables

Frames are use sparingly, if at all, on this site.

Tables, however, are used almost everywhere -- this page is a table. It should look basically the same on any size monitor at any screen resolution size, full screen or resized. The only variation should be the amount of blank space to each side. Netscape and MSIE display tables somewhat differently, depending upon the browser version, but do maintain most of a web designer's intent. Printing output seems better with tables than without and that's another reason why we use them.

Printing

Most pages viewed in newer browsers should print well using the "print preview" option that enables scaling to fit the selected paper size. We try to design pages that print well, but sometimes printer margins must be changed to the minimum or "0" setting. Page orientation can be changed from "portrait" to "landscape" when necessary.

Browser Plug-Ins, Helpers and Application Software

PDF -- A variety of documents and forms on our site are available as Adobe Portable Document files (PDFs) and can be viewed, downloaded or printed using the popular Adobe Acrobat Reader which is free and can be downloaded from at www.adobe.com It must be installed as a plug-in/helper application in order to view and print files. You can, however, download and save a file without having the reader, and download the Acrobat Reader at a later time.

ZIP - Some downloadable documents in the Elections Division and other sections are archived (compressed) in the ZIP format and you must unzip them using software such as WinZip, FreeZip, JustZIPit or PKZIP. Some may be self-extracting files, with an .EXE extension. See the Read Me files in the root directories for details as to the type of compression and what is required to read the unzipped files, since many of them are database or spreadsheet files.

Text Files -- Some text files are available for downloading in Lotus Word Pro or Microsoft Word. Most word processing software will import or otherwise read these files. A free MS Word reader is also available for those who do not have MS Word or cannot open the files. We also have documents created in the "plain text" ASCII TXT format and these can be read by any text reader or word processor.

Sound Files -- Several sections on our site have pages with embedded sound files that should play in the background using your browser's default media player or plug-in. Other pages have clickable links for visitors to play WAV, Midi or MP3 files.

Multimedia Files -- We use Windows Media streaming video files on a few pages to present movie files that can be viewed in Windows Media and other players. IBM's HotMedia is used on several pages to present slide shows and it does not require a helper or plug-in. The player "class files" are downloaded with the slide show images.

JAVA -- We use Javascript and applets for a variety of reasons on many pages. Set your browser to "Enable Java" (Netscape) or "Use Java" (MS Internet Explorer) to enjoy these pages.

Thanks for visiting our site. Please send your questions, comments or suggestions to me at webmaster@sos.louisiana.gov