Display problems when using this site

MakingContact.org is deliberately designed to be accessible to users with visual or other disabilities. To facilitate this we have made extensive use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to W3C standards for layout rather than traditional HTML tables. In this way screen readers and text-only browsers do not have to navigate through a host of formatting and imaging content in order to get to the actual content the user wants to read.

Unfortunately a downside of this choice is that some browsers, notably Microsoft Internet Explorer, do not render CSS according to W3C standards. We have done our best to accommodate these differences but it's possible that some browser versions and/or settings may display this site in an odd way. Below we list possible problem browser issues and what to do to rectify it.

Use of the forums

Older versions of Internet Explorer (6 and below) will not work on the forums. There are two reasons for this: the first is that the rendering engine for those varies vastly from newere versions and catering for such older browsers is getting beyond a good use of our resources, the second reason is that IE 6 and below have a heightened security risk when using things like the forums and it is one we would rather not expose our members to.

Internet Explorer 7 has been out for some years now and (iis by far the most popular version of Microsoft's browser to hit our websites. At the time of writing) IE8 is about to be released and can be downloaed in a trial format. IE6 was released in 2004 and is quite old now - even with updates and patches.

Although the rest of the site will work with these older versions of Internet Explorer it is probably best if you upgrade or change your browser for your own security. See our notes below on this. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Why your browser may render this site differently

1. Unicode : To enable the display of multiple character sets and languages, this site uses Unicode UTF-8 encoding. Most browsers will detect and display this automatically but if you have set your browser's encoding to be somethign else and turned off auto-detection, you may experience odd lookign characters - even in the latin script.

2. User-agent strings : All browsers broadcast the name of their product line and version to websites serving pages in something called a "user-agent string" (e.g. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 ). Some (badly configured) sites prevent access to their content based on this user-agent string. That is if the user-agent string does not specify Internet Explorer the site refuses to display any content.
To get around this some browsers allow the user to change the user-agent string for specific sites. This, in turn, prevents sites like this one from accurately detecting the browser and supplying the correct stylesheet. If you have set your user-agent string to represent your browser as anything other than your actually browser then this site may supply the wrong stylesheet. Change your user-agent string settings for this site such that your browser does not pretend to be anything else. Alternatively select an alternative stylesheet as shown below.
Note that if you do not understand any of these it is unlikely to be the cause of your problem.

3. Low resolutions and/or large font sizes : This site does not set font sizes or insist on screen resolutions, instead allowing users to set their own preferences in their browser settings. However the columnar design of the site does not lend itself very well to browsers with large font size settings or display resolutions below 800x600, mostly because things get very cramped. To make the site easier to read in these settings we supply an alternative set of stylesheets. See below to set your preferred one - we suggest you try the simple one first.

4. Printouts look different : Often when you printout websites you get a printed copy of what is on the screen. This is not always the best layout for a printed sheet - usually you'll find the left side of the page taken up with a pointless menu. To help avoid this CSS allows us to define different styles for printout and screens. When you print a page you get the same content but arranged in a printer-friendly format, no need to click on a printer-friendly button or link, just click print.

Selecting an alternative stylesheet

We provide two alternative stylesheets this site to help you view the site in the best way for you. They are:

• Simple ( apply now ) If you want to view the pages in a simpler style - still with colour and banners but without using the column layout design.
• Unformatted( apply now ) : A basic style with no layout, colours or banners. This is essentially the basic web page without styling or formatting applied and will work in any browser.
• Default ( apply now ) : The standard settings using column layouts and full colour.

If your browser accepts cookies from this site then your chosen style will be remembered on subsequent visits.

A last resort - change your browser

We don't like to dictate what browser you should use but if your current one is causing problems - despite the comments made above - then it may be a good idea to look at getting a different browser. Our site is by no means unique in it's adoption of W3C standard CSS and thus you may find you encounter issues on more sites to come.

If you are using Internet Explorer version 5.0, 5.5 or below then we strongly recommend you upgrade to a newer version of that browser.

If you would like to try a different browser altogether then you might like to consider Mozilla Firefox, Opera or ( if you are using GNU/Linux and KDE ) Konqueror. Apple users would be better using the defaul Safari browser that comes with their OS.