Recent web page changes have resulted in questions regarding the viewing of these web pages. Here are some tips to help improve the enjoyment of viewing the Art Bell web pages. And others too!

Screen Resolution and Colors

To enjoy the World Wide Web fully, you need to use the highest resolution and colors that your computer can deliver. Every computer system uses a video display card or chip to convert the computer code to video signals for display on a TV like screen. A combination of operating system settings and video card capabilities determines what your screen will look like. You can't easily change your video card, but you can attempt to increase your computer's display capabilities by checking and setting your operating system to use all of the available video card capabilities.

Each video card comes with a certain amount of memory on it. Not to be confused with your computer's RAM memory or your hard disk memory, this is video memory. Typical sizes range from 512K to 4 or even 8 Megabytes. The more memory on your card, the more colors you can display and the more detailed information you can display on the screen. Too often, computers are shipped with the system configured for the lowest possible settings. Because that is a safe configuration for the use with many monitors, manufacturers set the default video parameters very low. Some systems shipped today, may have the highest possible settings already configured, but don't count on it.

The term 'Color Depth' means how many colors you can display at the same time. The term 'Resolution' means how many pixels or dots, can you display accross the screen. The higher of either is better. Typically computers come set for a resolution of 640 pixels wide by 480 pixels high and the color depth set to 256 colors. This is simple standard VGA monitor settings.

Some characteristics of low resolution or low color depth video settings are:

• What are supposed to be solid colors show up as dotted or newspaper like photographs.
• Pictures are grainy and mosaic looking.
• Information on web pages runs off the screen and I have to scroll side to side.
• Items seem larger than life.

The amount of video memory on a particular video card, determines the ultimate highest color depth and resolution it can produce. And there is a tradeoff. At some point, trying to increase the number of colors, will reduce the highest resolution the card can produce. Or increasing the resolution too high will force the card to display a lower number of colors. Those limits are what the amount of memory on the card, determines. So here's the deal, you need to try to see how high you can set your video card and still retain reasonable colors and screen detail.

In Windows 95/98 there is an easy way for you to set these values. On a side note, if you know how, be sure to check if Windows recognized your display card properly and identified the amount of memory on it. You know, plug and pray! To get into the mode where you can set up your card, minimize all your currently running programs, or terminate them. RIGHT click on the desktop, and select PROPERTIES. Click on the SETTINGS tabs. Look midway down and examine on the left, COLOR PALETTE. This is the color depth setting. On the right side is DISPLAY AREA, which is your screen resolution.

As you raise the values for 'resolution' by sliding the control to the right, Windows will automatically reduce the 'color depth' settings if needed, to keep within the memory capacity of your video card. If you increase the 'color depth' settings by using the drop down list to select a higher number of colors, beyond the current capability, Windows will reduce the resolution. You obviously want the highest possible combination.

Some minimal settings to shoot for are 800x600 resolution (Display Area) and High Color 16-bit (Color Palette). Then try to go either to True Color 24-bit and retain the 800x600 setting. Save this one.

If you really want more screen detail, you can try 1024x768 resolution. Hopefully you can get this and still retain 16-bit color. If increasing the resolution causes the color pallette to switch back to 256 colors, then you've gone too high on resolution. Images will look better if you can get at least 16-bit color and then the highest resolution possible while retaining that 16-bit color. That's the goal. If you can get more, great!

Sometimes the size of your monitor screen should be used to detemrine to best resolution. Assuming you can get 16-bit color depth or better, you might want your resolution to be set as follows:

• 14" Monitor 800x600
• 15" Monitor 800x600
• 17" Monitor 1024x768
• 19" Monitor 1280x960 or more

Consider also, that running at a higher resolution will cause all the objects to shrink and take up LESS space on the screen. That's so more items or longer lines or larger images can fit on the screen. Think of it as holding a newspaper up to your nose. It's large but you can only see the area directly in front of your nose. Pulling back the newspaper makes the print smaller, but you can now see more of it at a time. That's the goal of increasing screen resolution. You can increase the FONT size settings of various programs to overcome the TINY print. See below.

My video cards come with 2 MEG or better. I can generally get 1024x768 and 16-bit color or I'll setup 800x600 and 24-bit color. If you get 1024x768 AND 24-bit color, then you're doing good. The web will display much better looking images and the web pages will have more room for displaying their content, if you can do your part in setting up your video system for the best looking performance.

One word of warning. As you increase the Display Area or screen resolution, the scanning frequencies that come out of your video card to your monitor may exceed the capabilities of the monitor itself. Most recent monitors are capable of these higher frequencies, but older ones will not work well. When you change these settings, Windows will give you a chance to NOT accept the changes and the system will resort back to the previous settings.

Now I don't want to get into the position of supporting your computer, but I provide this information to those who can use it and understand it. If you don't, please find your nearest teenager to do it for you. :-)

Increasing Font Size

PROBLEM: On computer monitors, some web pages with white lettering on black background are hard to read, however on WebTV, this looks good. Black lettering on white background is hard to read on Web TV, but computer users prefer this.

ANALYSIS: When people retain the default text font size on their browser, which is usually 10-point type size, the display of white letters on black or black letters on white may be hard to read. Even when we utilized a background pattern, if the text font size is too small, the letters can get lost in the background pattern. The web page itself doesn't decide what size of letters to print on your screen, you do, with your browser.

SOLUTION: The fix is to increase the font size that your browser uses to display text on your screen.

Netscape Navigator

1. Pull down the Options Menu, click on General Preferences. Select the Fonts page tab and examine the available options.
2. Click on Choose Font and change the size to 12 or 14.
3. Try a different Font style also, if you want.
4. Click OK and click OK again.

Microsoft Internet Explorer

1. Pull down the View Menu
2. Select the Font Menu
3. Select the Large or Larger selection.

Web TV

1. Goto Setup
2. Select Text Size
3. Choose Medium or Large

If you increase your font size too big, some lines or headers may wrap around onto a second line. However, you will appreciate the increased viewing comfort on all your favorite web pages.

Increasing Screen Space

PROBLEM: With so many tool bars and buttons, there isn't much room for the web page itself to display.

ANALYSIS: The software providers have tried to make their browser very easy to use. One way is to keep many available options on the screen all the time. The browser gets installed with all these tool bars turned on. They take up space whether you use them or not.

SOLUTION: The fix is to turn off some of the tool bars that you don't use. This will increase the space for displaying the web page.

Netscape Navigator

Under the Options menu, their are 3 tool bars selections that can be turned on or off. Show Toolbar, Show Location, Show Directory buttons. I suggest you turn OFF the Directory Buttons at least. You should also leave ON the Show Location.

You may want to turn off the Toolbar also, but if you leave it on, at least you can change it for more efficient use of screen space.

1. Pull down the Options Menu, click on General Preferences. Select the Appearance page tab and examine the available options.
2. Under Toolbars Click on Text.
3. Click OK and click OK again.

Now the Toolbar will be shorter, since it no longer needs to show pictures.

Microsoft Internet Explorer

With version 3.0 or better, the trick is to click and hold the divider between the tool bars and the viewing window and drag it back up to the top of the screen. The tool bars will shrink and combine and compact themselves.

You can reduce the three tool bars into one tool bar, that still contains all the selections on it.

Of course "Maximizing" the window helps too. Under Windows, click the Maximize Icon in the upper right window frame to make sure the browser fills to whole screen.

Reload Pages Daily

When you set up your browser settings to make use of disk and memory caching your browser keeps copies of most frequently visited pages on your computer, instead of asking for them again and again over the net. This keeps net congestion down and speeds up your access to pages.

Therefore, you need to reload certain pages daily to get the latest information off of them. You will have to tell your browser to get a more recent copy of the page, when you come back the next day. Look for the "RELOAD" command of your browser and use it each day to get the latest Home, Topics, Link and Guest pages.

WebTV: You must have Advanced Options enabled on your Web TV unit, to have the RELOAD function on your Options Menu. Goto Setup, then Advanced Options, then click it on! Then when you press the Option button, RELOAD will be one of the available selections.

Here is how to use it. Click on the link you want to see. If it is already on your computer, you will quickly get a display of the page. If it is yesterday's page, then use your RELOAD command to refresh the page. Your browser will then go out over the net and get it.

Some browsers may be set to ignore the cache and fetch pages over the net upon each startup of the browser. Then it will cache the pages after that. Exiting and re-running your browser would then tell it to start loading from the net again. If this is the case with your browser, you will get new data each time you startup your browser and won't need to use the RELOAD function.

Look under the Options menu, under Network Preferences, under the Cache tab, next to Verify Documents of Navigator for the proper setting of cache operation. Netscape can be set to check for a new page on the server and download only if it is new. You can instruct Netscape to do this everytime you access a page or only once each time you start up Netscape Navigator. I prefer everytime.

If clicking Reload doesn't get a new page, you can FORCE a reload by holding down the shift key and then clicking Reload. This will override any cache copies of the pages and cause Netscape to check all the images for new ones.

If you still can't get an updated page or image, go under the Options menu, under Network Preferences under the Cache tab, and click Clear Memory Cache Now and Clear Disk Cache Now buttons. This will clear everything and the browser will have to reload all pages and images too.

Printing White on Black

When trying to print out the pages on web sites that have white and yellow letters on the dark background, using some laser or color ink jet printers, will result in printed pages that are mostly white or mostly black. You can set your web browser up to print these pages by setting some printing options. You can tell your browser to treat the page as black text on white. Failing this, you can override the web page colors, by setting your own colors, and then viewing the page, and printing it.

1. Try Setting Print Options

Pull down the "FILE" menu, and click on "PAGE SETUP" . In "PAGE OPTIONS" check "BLACK TEXT" and "BLACK LINES", then click "OK". That's it! (You can leave these settings on all the time.)

Your browser may have slightly different menus and option names, but essentually you are looking to set the page printing options of the browser to override the page colors and print as black on white only. Most modern browser can do this.

2. Try Changing Your Colors

Pull down the "OPTIONS" menu and click on "GENERAL PREFERENCES". Select the "COLORS" page tab and choose a "TEXT COLOR" of BLACK and a "BACKGROUND COLOR" of "WHITE", then click on "ALWAYS USE MY COLORS, OVERIDING DOCUMENT" then "OK". (After printing, you need to go back to the "COLORS" dialog box and uncheck the "OVERRIDE" checkbox to see website colors properly again.)

Your browser may have slightly different menu names and options, but essentially you can override all page colors and set your own desired colors for background, text, links and such. You can setup a color set that prints well on your printer and turn these color settings on or off (override or not override) anytime you need to.

Don't forget to turn off override when you are done, or the web sites you visit will not display as intended.

3. Save the Text Somewhere Else

Another option is to "FILE" and "SAVE AS" the web page to a file on your system and then open the file in any word processing program, then just print it out from that program! This has the added advantage of being able to save it in another file format, but you do lose the images.

Web TV Users

Special Instructions for Web TV users will be placed here.

Real Audio Upgrades

2/10/98 Both AudioNet and myself are starting to use a newer Real-Audio format, namely the RA 5.0 6.5 kbps voice encoder. This format allows better quality sound in an even smaller file size. Unfortunately this newer format is currently not playable with the Web TV Internet Terminals. If you use Web TV to listen to our archives, you'll still be able to listen to the older files, as I won't be converting them, but only using the newer format from this point on.

You may contact Web TV and request that they upgrade their systems to support the latest Real-Audio formats. Inform them that AudioNet, the largest audio services provider on the net, and the Art Bell web page are using the newest formats and Web TV should keep up with the popular standards on the web.

We are sorry to inform you of this, but we see no other way to improve our web sites, and I'm sure Web TV will catch up soon, like they did before.

Chat Rooms

WebTV users can visit the Art Bell chat room on the various IRC networks. See the IRC page for more information.

Studio Cam Refresh

Thanks to the Lewis Brothers a past sponsor of the Art Bell program and supplier of Web TV units, who supplied me with a unit to test and debug the studio cam refresh action, we now have a fully operational Studio Web Cam page that works with Web TV systems. In fact it works BETTER than any other browsers.

The WebTV system can prefetch and load the new images in the background and do a quick video image "snap" to the new picture. All this without reloading the entire HTML page. This is actually MORE efficient on our web server than regular computer browsers. Keep in mind, the image is updated every 60 seconds, but there is a 10 minute time-out on your Web TV terminal, so it will disconnect if you don't touch a key or push a button within that time frame.