Advice on internet settings please

[ruthrrr]

Hi

Hope someone can help but am a complete novice on this... I have been having problems getting into Ancestry and if I do get in, problems viewing any census image.

I've consulted their help page, following their advice I have 1) cleared my temporary internet files and 2) allocated more space to my temporary internet files. However although accessing and searching the site has now definately speeded up, I am still having problems getting a census image to appear. The little timing box at the bottom of the screen (no idea what is is called) gets stuck on 4 bars!

They have also suggest changing the setting so that temporary internet files are delete when the browser is closed. What is the benefit of not doing this and keeping the files for a while?

Another suggestion to make access access quicker, is to delete all the cookie files except index.dat from the system - is this a good idea?

Any guidance will be gratefully received.

Ruth

[Steve Steere]

Hi Ruth,

Are you on a dial up connection or broadband?
Are you using their basic viewer, or do you now have their enhanced viewer?
The new one has icons at the top, left to right of; A hand (Drag), Magnifying glass (In), Magnifying glass (out), page size in percentage box, magnifying glass & page, then an options icon where you can choose the quality of the image.
I do wonder if you have the old one.

Regards,

Steve

[ruthrrr]

Hi Steve



Are you on a dial up connection or broadband?Steve
I am on dial up.


Are you using their basic viewer, or do you now have their enhanced viewer?
The new one has icons at the top, left to right of; A hand (Drag), Magnifying glass (In), Magnifying glass (out), page size in percentage box, magnifying glass & page, then an options icon where you can choose the quality of the image.
Steve
I am using the basic viewer. I noticed that it changed recently and that I could now use the side bars to navigate rather than increasing/decreasing and moving the pane across the image. But until now (last few days) I've not had a problem. I don't remember seeing an option icon where I could choose the quality of the image though...

Ruth

[Steve Steere]

Hi Ruth,

That is your problem, for some reason the icon asking you to download the new viewer has been missed. I have had a look but their help is pretty poor, and as I have the new viewer the option no longer appears.

This is why you are not getting it to work, as at first I ignored the new viewer and then started to encounter problems.

If you log in to Ancestry rather than to the UK you will see they have forums, so do a search of them and hopefully the solution will be found, or post a new one if not.

Other than that look for the old viewer in the 'add & remove' programs in the Control Panel, and then delete the old one. Then log back in and when you try to view an image it will tell you you need the viewer and ask you to download.

Sounds easy but I bet it will not be!

Good luck.

Steve

[Steve Steere]

Hi Ruth,

I should have said their latest viewer, which replaced the basic and the enhanced that you are using.

Best wishes,

Steve

[ruthrrr]

at first I ignored the new viewer and then started to encounter problems.
Hmm that rang bells - I ignored those prompts last week....



Sounds easy but I bet it will not be!

How right you were! |banghead| I managed to get the option to download the new viewer....downloaded but still couldn't get my images. Looked again and info said enable activex...do did...and still nothing!!! Finally tried to download viewer again - got message it was already downloaded....and that seems to have triggered something because I can now view the census...but am too tired now and am off to bed!!!

Thanks for all your help tonight. My PC may not have survived without you :)

Ruth

[Diane Grant-Salmon]

Oh dear, it looks like I'm going to have problems then. :( I'm on Windows 98 SE and didn't download the new viewer and was very pleased I hadn't, (see the other thread about Ancestry) as people were having trouble.

Yesterday afternoon (UK time) I had no problems accessing pages and saving them to my hard drive ...... later on today I'll log in and see what happens?

After reading these messages, I'm not very hopeful though.

[ruthrrr]

Hi Diane

Since I have dowloaded the new viewer I have not had any problems (touch wood!) Also I have found downloading the image to my c drive alot quicker. The only thing is that they are now a JPEG rather than GIF.

Again being a novice...what's the difference?

Ruth

[Steve Steere]

Hi Ruth,

Pleased you have it fixed!

Ignoring the technical side, if you had saved an image on your old viewer as as gif, then did the same with the new viewer as a jpeg, and then compared the picture quality, you will see that the jpeg has a much better view. I am now going back and re-saving all the one's I did as gif's.

To Diane,

While they say if is not broken don't try to fix it, the new viewer is far superior to the old, loads more quickly (for me) and is easier to use. Whether you switch is your decision though I am glad I changed over.

Regards,

Steve

[Diane Grant-Salmon]

Hi Ruth and Steve,

Thanks for the messages ...... I've just popped back from Ancestry to tell you that I've still managed to save the images on the basic viewer.

I've noted your comments Steve about downloading the enhanced viewer, but I'm only hanging on until someone on the Ancestry thread on this forum, comes back and tells me that they've fixed the problem regarding Windows 98 SE ...... then I'll download it.

Until that problem is sorted, none of them can save images I believe, so just getting what I can in the meantime.

[ruthrrr]

if you had saved an image on your old viewer as as gif, then did the same with the new viewer as a jpeg, and then compared the picture quality, you will see that the jpeg has a much better view. I am now going back and re-saving all the one's I did as gif's.


Thanks for the tip Steve - I'll make that my next project.

Ruth

[coenmfam]

The difference between a GIF and a JPEG, mostly the way the data that makes up the image is formatted and compressed.
I think GIF is a proprietary format owned by Compuserve, memory is a bit hazy on that one, but I think JPEG is an international format.
One small problem with JPEGs is that if you open and close them and open them again too often, each time a little bit of info is lost from the image and over time the quality of the image will degrade. If you can TIFF is a better format for large images.

When an image is compressed to save space in your memory, there are basically two ways of doing it. Lossy compression - which JPEG uses - where some of the information is squeezed out and Lossless compression - which TIFF uses - where no information is lost. JPEGs tend to be smaller files than TIFFs of the same image. JPEGS are best saved on a CD Rom where they can't be altered when they are re-opened.

I'm not aware of any advantage in the viewing of an image from one file format to another, the advantage of JPEGs and TIFFs is that most if not all picture viewers and programmes ( eg Irfanview, Photo-impact, The Gimp, Photoshop etc ) will open them.