Webmaster’s Office of The American Museum of Photography
|
||
|
|
Speaking as your humble Webmeister, let me first say that I am NOT lying down on the job, despite the suggestion of the image chosen by some unidentified Museum functionary to grace my page. As proof of my diligence, I’ve come up with a whole bunch of interesting odds and ends you can choose to view. Here’s the menu… either click on your choice or just scroll through at your own pace: 1. Tips for better viewing of The American Museum of Photography site. 2. Find a bug? Report it here! 4. Like this site? Our team can be your team! 5. Take a peek at the awards on the wall of our Trophy Room. 1. Tips for better viewing of The American Museum of Photography site. This site is best viewed with the latest version of Internet Explorer or Netscape Communicator/Navigator (click either browser name to download) A. Are you seeing “ridges” or “contours” instead of smoothly blending tones? Set your monitor for THOUSANDS OF COLORS, MILLIONS OF COLORS, TRUE COLOR, HIGH COLOR, 16 BIT COLOR or 32 BIT COLOR. The more colors your system can display, the better the images will look. If your computer is set to deliver 256 colors or (eek!) fewer, you’ll miss a lot. To set the number of colors (Windows 98), go to the START menu, select SETTINGS, select CONTROL PANELS, select DISPLAY, click the tab that says SETTINGS, and look for the box to choose the number of colors. (Don’t close the panel till you read section “B” below!) For most Macs, find the CONTROL PANELS in the Apple Menu, choose MONITORS, and set the number of colors (Don’t close the panel till you read a little further!) B. Do you have to scroll left-to-right because the edges of the images are cut off? While you’re in the control panel, set your monitor to display the right screen size or resolution. If you have a larger monitor, you may be able to choose a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels. If you can’t choose that, try 800 x 600 pixels. C. Slow connection? Most of our main pages and galleries will open in 45 seconds or less at 56k, and under a minute at 33.6k. If you’re in a rush, try our guided tour–it’s mostly text, loads fast, and can direct you around the site. If you have a 14.4 modem, please consider an upgrade; the only other advice we can offer is to have patience. We try to balance the need for speed with the fact that our mission is graphics-intensive–we want our viewers to enjoy clear, detailed images that are faithful to the originals. return to the menu for this page 2. Find a bug? Report it here! Does one of our links take you on a one-way trip to nowhere? Is a picture refusing to load? Report those annoying bugs by clicking right here. Let me know the full page location and what goes wrong… and I’ll get on it right away. return to the menu for this page 3. An Internet Service Provider with a heart of gold… and a computer warranty that really paid off (I swear I’m not making this up!) You’d never know it, but this site started out as just a single page with three images. It was a free personal site offered by the Detroit-based Internet Service Provider, World Wide Net. As the site grew, World Wide Net’s management and technical people were always there with help and support. When we were featured on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer home page (with a warning that hundreds of thousands of hits per day could result), World Wide Net put the site on a super-fast connection to handle the traffic. This site could not have been created without their generosity and support. And now–the Best Buy story. When our Director bought his first computer six years ago, he purchased a Power Mac from a Best Buy electronics store. At the time, it was one of the fastest computers available–running at a blazing 60 mhz! Despite advice to the contrary (“It’s all solid-state–if something’s going to go wrong, it’ll happen right after you get it”), he paid $39 for an Extended Service Plan from Best Buy. It was certainly the best $39 he ever spent. The Mac worked well until it was about three years old, and then things started going wrong. It needed a new power supply. A new logic board. A new hard drive. Each time, Best Buy’s techs fixed it free of charge under the extended warranty. Finally, three and a half years into the four year service plan, the floppy drive died. Under a provision that offered a new computer if more than three covered repairs were needed, Best Buy came through–providing a $2700 credit (the original cost of the Mac) toward a new computer. This time around, the extended service plan cost a little more–but purchasing it was a no-brainer! return to the menu for this page 4. Like this site? Our team can be your team! This site has been a design laboratory for us, and we’ve learned some important lessons. One of them is simplicity. You won’t find any frames that crowd the rest of the page into a corner, or fancy programming that can crash an unsuspecting browser–just words and pictures and the right organization. If this philosophy makes sense to you, we’d be happy to contact you for a consultation. Visit Becker Information Group online at www.BIGwebsite.com or send an email message here. 5. Take a peek at the awards on the wall of our Trophy Room. Here are a few of the awards received by our predecessor site, “Photography’s Beginnings.” Our more recent awards are proudly featured on the Museum’s News page.
Thanks to everyone who nominated us & to those who granted the awards! —Your Humble Webmeister Click on the logo below to visit our Home Page or click on another choice:
American Museum of Photography and the logo are Service Marks of The American Photography Museum, Inc. |
