Hints and Tips

This page contains helpful suggestions for improving your viewing experience while visiting this website and most other websites. The suggestions include monitor settings, navigating within your browser and settingpreferences/optionsfor optimum viewing in your browser . These suggestions are appropriate for most computers and most browsers. The Home Page of the Oxnard LBC website uses a frameset with two frames. More about frames later.

This page shares a common look with many other pages on this website. This is because style sheets are used on these pages to set a particular font type and color and to set a graphic background. These stylesheets were chosen for the readability but also to distinguish specialized areas of the website like Tournaments, Visitations, etc.

Below you will find suggestions for using different font types and smaller or larger fonts in your particular browser. This website has been written in HTML code to best work with Microsoft Internet Explorer but it should look almost the same in any other browser such as Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox and Netscape. You needn't read beyond this unless you think you want to optimize your computer settings.

Monitor Settings:

This Oxnard LBC website is designed for best viewing at a Screen Resolution of 1,024x768 or greater which is what the great majority of 17" monitors are set for. Today most computers have 17" monitors capable of these resolutions. Your Screen Palette should be set to High Color (16 bit) or True Color (24 bit). These monitor settings are the best for surfing most websites today. If you are using a screen resolution less than 1,024x768, you will not be viewing the content as it was intended. If you do not have your monitor set for High Color (16 bit) or higher you are missing a world of clarity. It is recommended that for proper viewing of all Internet sites, you set your monitor to these settings, providing your equipment is up-to-date (less than 4 years old). AOL uses Internet Explorer if you did not know.

With frames, which this site uses, the browser window shares two side-by-side panes (a frameset). Some times the content is too wide and many times too long for the available space in the left or right frame. Thus, scroll bars will automatically appear which take up otherwise useful space. The optimum pane avoids horizontal scroll bars. Each frame displays a different Web page. Elimination of horizontal scroll bars can be done at least two ways (a third way is described in the Browser Settings paragraph below and Item 1. at the bottom of this page). First, the Web page should be designed to fit the pane width. Some pages are best viewed in a non-frame window (a separate window), and pages on this site that require the additional width will open to a separate window. This is under the control of the Web page publisher. Second, the visitor to the website has computer settings that if used optimally will make Web page viewing easier. The settings come with trade-offs. Some of us have poorer vision than when we were younger; therefore, need larger print on the screen. For those, set the monitor to 800x600 resolution with large fonts. If the large print is not needed, set the monitor to at least 1,024x768 and small font. The advantage of using the higher resolution is that more content fits the screen. The disadvantage is that the content becomes smaller at these higher resolutions. Item 2. at the bottom of this page explains one way to reset monitor settings. Hint: If a page's print is too small to read you can easily increase its size with the keys CTRL and +. For example, hold down the CTRL key and press the + key one or more times. Each time will increase the print size more. CTRL and the minus sign decreases print size.

Browser Navigation:

The CHANGES page lists all the additions so you can use it to determine if an event has been added to the CALENDAR OF EVENTS page or new photos of an event have been posted. First check to see what the latest date for revision of the Home Page is.
The URL address box at the top of your browser in which you enter the website address has a dropdown menu which may contain the Oxnard LBC website as a choice. This saves typing in the address or going through all the entries you have made in your Microsoft Internet Explorer Favorites or Netscape Bookmarks.
Your browser BACK button has a drop down menu which stores your most recently viewed pages in order. You can use this to jump to a prior page skipping several pages you'd otherwise pass through using the browser BACK button itself.
Look for a gray button on some pages to "Return to Home Page" .
Your browser's BACK button will always return you to the prior page.
Hyperlinks -- If you click on any of the blue or red underlined text on any pages (green pages use white hyperlinks) you will be taken to a new location:
1. sometimes to another section on the same page
2. or to another page within the Oxnard LBC site
3. or to an entirely different website, such as other interesting lawn bowling sites

(The Home Page does not use the common light blue underlined text for its links. Links there are not underlined and are a deep blue-gray. Often the picture on the Home Page is a link you can click to open a page with that image.)

Browser Settings:

You can move the separator between left and right frames of the Home Page by dragging it with the left mouse button for possible better viewing of right frame or to remove the horizontal scroll bar from the left frame.
Open your browser window to maximum size for best viewing and if scroll bars still get in the way, try eliminating some of the tool bars at the top of the browser or at least use smaller icons on the tool bar or text only. If scroll bars are still a problem when viewing in right frame, click the right mouse button anywhere in the right frame and select "Open Frame in New Window" to open that page in a separate large window. For more on this see 1. below. The function key F11 will open your browser full screen with minimun menu bars. It also returns the screen to prior setting.
Use your browser PREFERENCES to set the font type and size, graphics and other appearance features. For example, you may want to view the type style as ARIAL and in a larger size font for readability where the font is small and Times New Roman.
If images appear to ghost in the AOL browser, try turning off the compressed graphics setting.
Frequently click the browser RELOAD/REFRESH button if you have reason to believe the current page has been updated and you are not viewing the latest version. Your browser loads pages first from the cache on your computer hard drive and may load an old page that you viewed weeks ago. The browsers are not infallible and they often miss the fact that a newer version is on the website. Click the right mouse button anywhere in the right frame to refresh only that panel if you have reason to believe it is not a current page.

Here are some general hints. Hints are added from time to time.

1. How to view a page that has horizontal scroll bar at bottom of page: Try the second link on the Photo Library page for Holmby Park photos as an example of viewing in a full window. An easy way to open any link in a full window rather than the right panel in a frame is to right click your mouse on the link and select "Open in New Window". This works in Netscape and MS Internet Explorer browsers. Some images excede the width of the right frame and images, of course, don't wrap like text so a scroll bar appears. You can expect to see more and more large images as they show detail like faces much better than when they are reduced in size.

2. How to change your monitor settings: Right click anywhere on the desktop (except on an icon) and from the popup Display Properties menu select the Settings tab. Select True Color (24 bit) or High Color (16 bit). Select 1024x768 for Screen Area and click OK to exit with the new settings.