Problems viewing info.

[Titanicfan]

Recently I signed up for credits with a well known website to view census info. etc and time after time I am having problems with downloading their enhanced image viewer!! |banghead| I have contacted them quite a few times and tried all the things that they suggested I do but I still can't download this! I only have a few days left before my credits run out without me being to view any of the all important info!

Has anyone had this same difficulty? Any ideas would be most welcome! |computer|

[pipsqueak]

I downloaded the image viewer but can't get it to work! I discovered though, that even if it give me a blank page and I can't see the image (which is what usually happens), if I click on the SAVE IMAGE button, I can save it and see it. Not sure why that is, but that's what I did.

[Titanicfan]

Hi Pipsqueak, I can't even get that far... My computer just doesn't like their image viewer for some unknown reason!! Thanks anyway - if I ever get as far as you have in the process then I will remember to do that just in case!

I will have to ask them for a refund. Can anyone hint (in a round about way) anywhere else where I can view the 1851 census online on a credit basis?
(I hope I'm not contravening any forum rules by asking!) |blush|

[Jillychris]

I have problems now I have Vista operating my computer. I use the basic viewer, can you do that?

Regards
Jill

[Titanicfan]

Hi Jillychris, I'm unable to use the basic viewer also. |sad1|

[Jillychris]

From another message board site try using A**** through Firefox if you are not already.

I hope this helps.

Regards
Jill

[Titanicfan]

Thanks, Jillychris I will look into that. :)

[chris townsley]

I had the same problem until I downloaded a 'Firefox Viewer' which was recommended on another forum - the acobat viewer was hopeless. No trouble with viewing at all now - think that we are talking about the same website - you can never get an answer from them in less than a week by which time the problem is likely to have been sorted. chris

[chris townsley]

I forgot the website
www.mozilla.com/firefox

[Titanicfan]

Thanks for the info, ChrisTownsley By the sounds of it we are definitely talking about problems with the same website!! Will I still be able to use the Internet Explorer browser for other sites? :)

[chris townsley]

Sorry, I don't think that I made my message very clear. I found that the problem with the downloading was my acrobat viewer - it is that I replaced with the firefox software. If I want the acrobat to take over again I have to set mine to default- but I don't need to do this.

[tiggerbrat]

I am a computer tech if you can give me the web site and image viewer you are trying to download and I can see if I can find another viewer from a different source.

[MarkJ]

Thanks for the info, ChrisTownsley By the sounds of it we are definitely talking about problems with the same website!! Will I still be able to use the Internet Explorer browser for other sites? :)

You can install both Firefox and Internet Explorer at the same time with no problems. If you prefer IE, then when installing Firefox, simply don't tick the box when asked to set it as your default browser.
As a qualified IT technician, I would personally recommend only using IE if you have a specific website which requires it (the very occasional website is sometimes badly coded and needs IE, but they are few and far between). Although ALL browsers have security vulnerabilities - including Firefox, whatever some people say - the vulnerabilities in Firefox are generally fixed within 24 hours. The same cannot be said for IE, where security issues are mostly dealt with on "Patch Tuesday" (the once a month roll out of "updates" for Windows) and some vulnerabilities are still there in IE after several years :(

I cannot comment about viewing things on the big A website, as I don't use it, so I have no idea about that problem. If I know what causes it - e.g pdf reading problems or whatever - then I could suggest a fix, but as mentioned, I don't use it.

Mark

[Jillychris]

I am operating Firefox on my computer how do I get a Firefox viewer I have looked but can't see what to do?

Thankyou

Jill

[MarkJ]

Not sure which viewer Chris was referring to. There is a Firefox add-on which allows you to view downloadable pdfs in a flash thing, but I haven't tried that myself anyway.
Can you not simply right click the image and select save as.. ?

I have no idea why a website expects you to download some sort of viewer to see a document. What format are these docs in? As I mentioned, you should be able to right click on the image and select Save As.. and that should download it to your drive. Once there, you should be able to view it with whatever tool opens the format - Acrobat Reader for pdf, MS Office or OpenOffice for .doc files etc.

Mark

[tiggerbrat]

I am not sure either I don't use Firefox but I saw the Image viewer and use and have used several different ones and thought I might be able to help.

[MarkJ]

Handy that there are a few of us techies on the forum though! I am more of a hardware and Linux guy myself, but I do come into contact with Windows machines as well from time to time ;)
Hopefully, Jill will be able to give a bit more info regarding the issue and one of us should be able to help her out :)

Mark

[michaelpipe]

Going back to the beginning, do you even need the "enhanced" viewer? I found that it was slower to operate, and just a total 'pain in the a***'.
I gave it the flick straight away. I just use the normal viewer for A*****y - with Firefox of course.

Michael

[Titanicfan]

Hi everybody, thanks for all your info. I am still at square one with the big A website - I was told to wait until this week when the tech guys can help me try to sort it out! I'm chomping at the bit having to wait to download the census' that I need for my research! This enhanced image viewer seems to be a complete pain in the .... |banghead| I'm glad that there are some tech guys on this forum that can help us out! I'm wary about using IE after reading your comments about security vulnerability. I just assumed that because it was already installed on my computer when I bought it that it was very safe... obviously not! Regarding Firefox, when I went to the Moxilla Firefox website to read about it they said that if you migrate from IE to Firefox then you will lose your cookies and history. Are those things very important to keep? You can tell that I am not a computer tech can't you!!! :)

[suedent]

I am a committed Firefox user although I have downloaded an add-on called ie viewer.

If I should land on a website that doesn't like Firefox (a couple of big supermarkets spring to mind) all I have to do is right click on a page & select "view this page in ie"

The problem I have with A******y is that when viewing the enhanced viewer with Firefox the browser crashes with annoying frequency. I actually find that using ie with A******y is sometimes a better option.

[MarkJ]

Cookies are little bits of data which have a number of uses in the world of wbesites. First - and most useful - is that they are what makes it so that you can return to a site such as this and not have to enter your password again, providing you haven't logged out and the time isn't too long.

The other main use for them is that they track your movements around the web. Not all cookies do that, but a number of websites have these "tracking" cookies which allow companies to see what sort of websites you visit (anonymously in most cases), so they can sell the data to advertisers to use in their marketing. If for example you go to the Boots website, then the Tesco website, that dat would be noted down and then the marketing companies can say stuff like " Oh, 23% of people who visit Boots website then go to Tescos - so maybe we can sell Tesco advertising to Boots to boost the number heading there..." Well, thats the sort of idea! (Note that I picked those two companies at random - I have no idea if they use or have any deals with companies using tracking cookies.
A lot of people dislike tracking cookies - myself included. However, if used correctly (anonymously), they are of use to the large companies I suppose.

So would losing cookies be a problem? Unlikely. I set my Firefox to delete ALL cookies when I close Firefox anyway ;)

History is a list of sites you have recently visited. You will find it along the top of your browser somewhere I expect, in a drop down menu. In Firefox (and I think IE), the drop down is called History. It will show the addresses of sites you have visited for the last so many days, depending on the settings or whether you clear it or not.
Again, I clear mine at the end of a Firefox session anyway - I always bookmark good sites I intend to return to, but some people use the History as a (very basic and easy to delete) way of seeing what their children for example have been up to. How effective that is remains debateable - they are very easy to delete (at least to the normal viewer - an expert may well be able to recover the information though!)

All browsers, as I mentioned yesterday, carry their own sets of vulnerabilities. Firefox does have a very good record of fixing any which are reported as soon as they are found, which makes it safer in my view. However, we all need to be careful on the web and avoid dodgy websites if possible.
Internet Explorer comes with Windows, hence why most folks tend to simply use that - it is already there. It does the job as far as rendering most websites is concerned and still has a 60%+ hold on the browser market - again, probably because it comes bundled with Windows. Although it is better than it was (anyone using IE5 or less really should consider changing!), Microsoft are still quite slow at releasing fixes - even for very serious problems at times.
If you install Firefox, the cookies and History from Internet Explorer are not transferred across - but they should still be there on your Internet Explorer installation. Firefox will, when used, begin to amass its own History and cookies (as I mentioned - I delete them at the end of each session!).
You can import your favourites (bookmarks) into Firefox - they will still be there in Internet Explorer too :)

As long as you use a good firewall (most routers have built in firewalls) and have an up to date Anti Virus program (and preferably something to remove non-virus junk, e.g Spybot S&D or Lavasofts AdAware) then your computer security should be good for most users - whether you use IE, Opera or Firefox on your Windows system. Mac owners and those running alternative operating systems - such as Linux or BSD - are already much safer as Windows viruses do not affect those systems. However, they do have their own (admittedly very tiny) risks - mostly from rootkits and other technical stuff which I won't go into here (unless anyone is really interested!).

If you are happy with Internet Explorer and take sensible precautions to keep your anti virus program up to date etc and use Windows Update to patch your system as needed, then you should be pretty safe. Firefox would add another small link into your armour, but, if you are happy with IE, then it is entirely up to you if you would wish to consider alternative browsers. Here for example, we all use Firefox, except my younger daughter - who insists on using IE! No idea why - but I don't force her to change if she is happy.

Hope this helps - but if you are still wondering about anything, please ask :)

Cheers,
Mark

[tiggerbrat]

Hi
Cookies & history is not that important just shows where you have been if you bookmark sites you don't need history. Which image viewer add-on for firefox are you having trouble with?

[Titanicfan]

Thanks MarkJ and Tiggerbrat for the info. I'm just a newbee surfer so I was just a bit worried about the security risks etc. The problem on the big A website still exists but instead I used someone else's computer to download the 'so called' enhanced image viewer so that I could save the census information and actually use the credits that I paid for! I spent so much time waiting for their tech guys to help me, waiting on the telephone for support, etc. that I just gave up. In the future, when I next need to use the big A then I will definitely consider Firefox because this might be the only answer with this problem. Thanks for all your helpful advice. :)