General information:  Scenic Color Country is all about scenery and geology with many large photos, which take time to load into memory, every time a new photo is selected.  We attenpt to counteract that delay by pre-loading graphics, more about that below.  If the internet connection is dial-up, perhaps even 512kb, the viewing experience here may not be pleasant - we reccommend 1.5Mb+  DSL or broadband internet service for the greatest viewing pleasure.

Status bar:  With the advent of Firefox 8, Internet Explorer 9, and Google Chrome since inception, the status bar has disappeared and that information is now placed inside the window, covering some of our critical components.  We are in the process of adding a status bar at the bottom or our pages as needed to uncover those components.

An information box.

Conventions:  highlighted text opens a box similar to that on the right with information or a photo, underlined text opens a new window, and underlined highlighted text opens an info box (like above) with an option to open a new window.

Pre-loading photos into memory:  To counter the delay while a photo loads into memory (you know what we mean - watching a photo appear as it paints down the screen), we load photos into cache while the viewer is perusing the page's text, so they will appear instantly when selected (aka a pop-up photo).  Photo galleries have many photos - gallery pages take an inordinate time to load.  So, with some notable exceptions, we've opted away from galleries in favor of alternate technologies that load images into cache on the fly.  Examples are the scenic byways and Grand Canyon Hike (one of the more notable gallery exceptions) where a page pre-loads the next page's photo.  Once in cache, photos may stay there.

exit More for Internet Explorer