Viewing Hints
Finding Information about Theories and Section Introductions
The heart of the site is the Theory Resources section, which provides links to an array of material, some from the Instructor's Manual, other designed specifically for the website. You can view resources by type or by theory (which includes section introductions) in alphabetical order. In View by Theory you can also navigate forward and backward in the order in which material appears in the book.
To find resources by book layout, you may find it quicker to use the Table of Contents page, with links to Theory Resources. You'll find links to this page on the "home" page ("Instructors" tab for logged in instructors, or "Books" tab for others), or a link on the Theory List tab, or in the Quick Search drop-down menu.. It, of course, is limited to material in the 7th edition.
You can also use the Theory List page, which provides a list of all theories ever covered in the seven editions of the book, again with links to Theory Resources. The Theory List can be sorted by theory name or theorist.
Browser Compatability
The site has been tested thoroughly on the latest versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox, the two most common browsers in use today. Page layout should appear as designed on these browsers, with only minor differences beween the two. The new Google Chrome browser (released in beta September 3, 2008) appears to be fully compatible with the site design. Both Firefox and Chrome do a nicer job of handling images than IE.
The website makes extensive use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for page layout, which is the accepted standard today. However, not all browsers are compliant with the current CSS standards. With Safari 3 (for Windows) most pages conform reasonably well, while some of the more complex pages have elements that do not line up correctly, especially in the vertical plane. Hopefully, as new versions of each browswer are developed, conpliance with the standards of the World Wide Web Consortium ("W3C"—the international standards organization) will improve.
Browser Resolution
A "Display Width" option in the footer allows you to adjust the width of the site in your browser.
The normal, "wide" setting is designed to run on monitors with a width of 1024-pixels or greater, which now accounts for the majority of monitors in use. The "narrow" version produces a display approximately 800-pixels in width, which should work on other monitors. If your computer allows the storage of "cookies," it will remember the width setting the next time you go to the site. Otherwise, it will start at the wide setting.
(Note: Initially, width was automatically detected. However, this proved problematic in some browsers and in some network settings.)
Text Size
Most of the text on the site can be adjusted in size. Use the Text Size buttons at the top right. Changing the text size also affects the size of text when you print pages. If you have cookies enabled, the setting will be retained when you return to the site. Otherwise, it will begin at the default setting.
On some pages, as the text size increases there may be some overlap or shifting of page elements, but it should still be quite viewable. Most broswers also allow you to adjust text size within their options. For some users, an even better way to make a site more readable, is the "zoom" feature in Internet Explorer 7, which maintains the composition of the website pages while zooming in or out on them.
Printing
Printing web pages from a browser can be a problem because it typically prints everything. When you see a printer icon on pages within the First Look site, it will print only the core content on that page, eliminating all of the navigation and other surrounding page elements, and printing the entire contents of a scrolling window.