Viewing Suggestions

While this site was designed with a screen resolution of 640 X 480 in mind, a more modern resolution of 800 X 600 (or higher) is preferred.  The higher resolution will allow viewing of the larger version of most of the photographs so they fill the screen (and show greater detail) and prevent wrapping of captions and links.

Also, a display palette of 256 colors is inadequate.  A range of 65,000 colors (called 'High Color' or '16 bit' [PC] or 'thousands' [Macintosh]) is adequate, and an even higher 'color depth' (24 bit, 32 bit or 'millions') is preferred.

The goal was to present high quality photographs.  To that end, speed of display was sacrificed to achieve detail.  Photographs could have been generated that would have loaded much more quickly, but fine detail would have been lost.  To take advantage of this, a higher display quality on the user's computer is required.

If you wish to check the screen resolution and color depth of your computer, do the following:

Windows 95/98/NT4:

Click the Start button (usually in the lower left corner).  In the menu that appears, click on Settings, then Control Panel.  In the dialog box that appears, double click on Display.  The Display dialog box will have tabs at the top.  Click the tab labeled Settings.  The style of the Settings dialog box will vary, but somewhere will be a reference to Screen Area or Desktop Area and Colors or perhaps Color Palette.  The screen area will usually have a slider control that can be moved with the mouse, while colors will frequently have a drop down list of choices.  If screen area is set at 640 X 480 and/or colors are 256, try adjusting them to at least 800 X 600 and 16 bit colors.  After these adjustments are made, you may have to restart the computer for the changes to take effect (if the computer suggests a restart, do so).

Macintosh:

Go to the Apple pull-down menu.  Open Control Panels. Then open Monitors and Sounds Control Panel.  Click on Monitor button.  Set Colors menu to 'thousands' or 'millions.'  Set Resolution to 800 X 600 (if possible).  Exit this Control Panel by using Command (Apple) and Q keys at the same time.