About the Chetham's Library website

Welcome to the Chetham's Library website. If you have any problems using the site, or comments to make, please mail the system operator.

FAQ

Q: I can't see the site well because I have a visual impairment, or my display is poor, what can I do?
A: If you are using a newer browser such as Netscape 6.x or Mozilla 1.x, you'll find you can change to an alternative stylesheet from the view menu: we've provided a stylesheet called hi_contrast which suppresses the background image and provides a larger typeface with higher contrast colours. Please try this. If you don't have such a browser, are you aware that most graphical browsers have a text zoom feature, often also under the view menu, enabling you to obtain a bigger typeface display?

Q: Why do all the images appear spotty and with horribly distorted colours?
Q: Why do I sometimes get a horizontal scroll-bar?
Q: Why so some bits of the site line up in a bad way?
A: The answer to all these is probably that your colour-depth is set to 256 colours or less, and/or that your monitor resolution is set at 640x480 or below. We have done our best to make the site interoperable, but we do recommend at least 16 bit colour depth and a resolution of 800x600 or higher. The site should still work tolerably at 640x480, but all web images will look bad unless you use a high-colour display driver.

Q: OK, I did that, but the images are still somewhat blotchy, particularly thumbnails.
A: We have tried to make the site interesting visually, which involves pictures; but because a lot of people have low bandwidth, we've kept thumbnail file sizes as low as possible to give reasonable download speeds. Most small images on the site link to a bigger version that should be better to look at: if you want a high-resolution image of anything on the site, please contact us. Please also see the copyright declaration if you want to reproduce an image found here.

Q: I'm using a text-only browser and things are working badly, or Can I use a text browser?
A: We tested the site using Lynx, and all of it, including the catalogue, should work with text only browsers. If you are having difficulties, please mail the system operator who will try to fix things.

Q: I'm using a graphical browser, but the results still aren't to my taste, what can I do?
A: We tested the site using Netscape 4 and 6, IE 5.5 and 6, Konqueror 2.2.1, Mozilla 0.99, and Opera 5, and also varied the platform to include Mac, Solaris on SPARC, Linux, BSD, and Windows 95-98. If your browser is giving poor display results, it may be because it doesn't understand Cascading Style Sheets (CSS - see the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) papers on CSS for details). You could try upgrading your browser to a more recent version, which should give better results in general as well as here, but please also send reports of your problem, including details of your OS and browser version to the system operator.

Q: Am I having problems because you've used non-standard HTML or CSS?
A: We've tested all pages for conformance to W3C standards using their validators, to be found at links under the W3C's pages. Compliant browsers with recent version numbers should be capable of rendering the pages accurately.

Q: How was the site written?
A: In XHTML 1.0 using Vim and Kate, the KDE Advanced Editor. We leant heavily on Laura Lemay's excellent Sams Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML and XHTML in 21 Days, Professional Reference Edition (SAMS, 2001, ISBN 0672322048) for help and advice.

Q: What does the site run on?
A: On the Apache webserver running on OpenBSD: all free, high quality software. Why pay for less?

Q: My question isn't here? What can I do?
A: Please mail the system operator with the query and we'll try to get an answer.