So Tell Me More About This Site...

Why Do I Have Trouble Reading Your Pages?
This site makes extensive use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Unfortunately a number of older browsers do not implement the CSS standard correctly (if at all). The worse offenders are Microsoft Explorer 3.x and Netscape 4.x. These browsers have incomplete, bug-ridden, and contradictory implementations of the CSS 1 standard and little or none of the CSS 2 standard. In short, these browsers are obsolete and the viewer is advised to upgrade to a newer browser such as MS Internet Explorer 8.x, Opera 10.x, or Firefox 3.x. Even these newer browsers will show slight differences in page layout interpretation.

Some pages such as our Contact page require that Javascript be installed to view properly. The Contact page lists all of the Tucson Rifle Club Officers, Committee Members, and Match Directors and their e-mail addresses (when made available). Because automated robots, known as SPAMbots, search the web for e-mail addresses to use in creating SPAMing lists (usually keying on any text of the form: user@isp.com), these addresses are hidden and displayed via a Javascript function at the time of page display.

Links in the text body (center/wide column) of the pages follow the traditional underlined format. Links in side columns are not underlined due to reduced size. Most of these links are formatted as unnumbered lists. Run you mouse over them and they'll highlight, then click as you would an underlined url.

Finally, this site from time to time may make use of Macromedia Flash MX. If your browser does not have the Macromedia Flash MX player, you may not be able to view all of this site's features.

Why Do I Have Trouble Printing Your Pages?
Printing is inherently difficult from a web based medium. I have created stylesheets for printing, but those only go so far. Much has to do with your browser. Some Firefox versions seem completely broken as they will not print out more than the first page. Internet Explorer seems better, while Opera is the best. Use your Print Preview option to see what works best for you.

The print stylesheet is intended to remove all page graphics, links, and whatever else is not useful from a print media page representation. If you want to copy the graphics, just right click on them to save them directly. Another option that works is to take a screen snapshot of the page and send that graphic to your printer.

So what did you use to test this site?
This site has been tested using MS Internet Explorer 8.x, Firefox 3.x, and Opera 10.x on a Windows XP system under a 1920 x 1200 screen resolution. Opera is a pretty good browser—perhaps the best, but since it is little used outside of Europe, we've not attempted to construct pages with Opera specifically in mind.

Although best viewed at 1024 x 768 resolution (XGA) or larger, just about every page in this site should adjust properly to a user selected window size larger (SXGA) or smaller (SVGA) than 1024 x 768. No special consideration is paid to the length of any page in this site. You'll probably need to scroll down on any particular page to view all the content.

At higher screen resolutions, e.g., 1280 x 1024 or 1600x1200 dpi, text may appear small—perhaps smaller than one is comfortable reading. CSS layout used on this site allows for enlarging of the text display via your browser without destroying original page layout.

Non-standard link colors are used. Typical navigation menus are text based (rather than button) and back-lighted when the cursor passes over them.

Some of the pages seem to load slow
This site has been mostly edited and uploaded from home across a 1.5M baud DSL connection. Pages have been made to load in the shortest time possible (believe me, I hate waiting in front of a blank window as well), but your mileage may vary depending on your connection speed, ISP, and browser.

A new site feature being added are Flash movies made from video mpegs. Video files by definition are large! A 100kB file is considered small, while a more typical size for short video clips is 500kB. These pages are best viewed by users with high bandwidth connections.

The longest page (aside from the picture & video pages) is currently the first page of this site, www.tucsonrifleclub.org. Typical download time is about 25 seconds at 28.8kb. This should speed up when redundant page information is cached after the first viewing.

Some browsers are slower than others as well. The newer Netscape versions, 6.x & 7.x, seem to be the worse with MS IE just a bit better. Fastest browser I've tested is Opera. Opera also has the reputation for adhering to current HTML standards better than its competitors. Its now free. Download Opera and give it a try. Mozilla is the engine that Firefox and Netscape are based on. Consider Mozilla as Netscape without all the AOL overhead—like embedded advertisements. You might give Firefox a try. I use Firefox exclusively

My favorite browser is Netscape 4.x, will it work?
Was mine too. But Netscape 4.x is going to have a number of problems with this site. Upgrade your browser.

Why are the pictures so large?
Pictures in most cases adhere to a 600 x 400 pixel standard. They are typically 70-90k in size (although a number are larger). The size of the picture posted depends a lot on how I feel on the particular day I'm editing them. Some days I opt for less compression than other days. All pictures are in JPEG format and have been edited (cropped, color enhanced, and sharpened) with Adobe Photoshop. I have a tendency to make our pictures bright. If they look washed out, try darkening your screen. I use a standard MS gamma of 2.2. I believe that pictures should be large enough to recognize who's being photographed. Besides I have a 10 megapixal camera. ;-)

Seriously, I love to take pictures of TRC events. However, I often feel as if I'm getting in the way, so I don't show up unless especially invited. Send e-mail to webmaster'at'tucsonrifleclub.org, if you have an event you'd like photographed. I'll see what I can work out.

Boy, there sure are a lot of mistakes in these pages and some of the information is old
Oh yeah, well so's your old man... Seriously though, if you notify the , I'll try to correct them. As to old information, that's always a tough one since I'm dependent on others to supply information in a timely manner. The Number of visitors to this page: total at the bottom of each page is reset every year, so those numbers are meaningful mostly to the Webmaster and are not completely valid as an indication of page activity or inactivity.

I can't find information using your search engine
On the results page, try clicking on search tips. There are a number of formatting rules for constructing search phrases and using wildcards. When searching for names, try extending them with wildcards, e.g., *John* rather than John. Additionally, not all photo pages are indexed by the search engine. If all else fails, you might try using a simple site map display and browse through pages that look promising. It is possible to use Google for searching the TRC website, and onlly the TRC website. Use Google's site: specification in your search string. For example, to look up TRC's latest Creedmoor Cup results, you can search on the string, Creedmoor site:tucsonrifleclub.org, using the Google seach engine.

What's this Weblog thing?
Blogging is one of the newest phenomena on the net. Blogs are personal publication vehicles using the internet.

Weblogs Are To Words What Napster Was To Music. –Andrew Sullivan

Many, if not most, are little more than personal diaries made available for public viewing. All of them are imbued with the temperament of their writer(s). I try to use this software as a mechanism to keep TRC members informed of events and happenings of a local and regional nature that pertain to the Tucson Rifle Club and the Three Points Public Shooting Range. Hopefully, the TRCblog will serve as a supplement to our monthly Board meetings.

Acknowledgements
I'd like to thank Six Apart for making their Movable Type blogging software available to the Club and for inspiring the current site's look and to the all those who have made thoughtful suggestions wrt this site, especially Peter Hills for his comments regarding the original TRC website organization and style.

Finally...our standard disclaimer  
This website is made available for your personal enjoyment, there are no warranties of any kind relating to this website, express, implied or statutory, including but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. In no event shall TRC be liable to you or any other party for any direct, indirect, general, special, incidental, consequential, exemplary or other damages arising out of your use or inability to use this website (including, without limitation, damages for loss of business profits, business interruption, loss of business information or any other pecuniary loss), or from any breach of warranty (in this case, none), even if TRC has been advised of the possibility of such damages. In no case shall TRC liability exceed the amount you paid to TRC for access to information on this website (i.e., nothing).