How to use IA

How to use Internet Archaeology

Registration is no longer required to access the full text of every article published in the 'Internet Archaeology' journal. Apart from issue 1 which remais free, access is for subscribers only. See our subscriptions noticeboard for details.

Some technical requirements and recommended specifications

Plug-ins, Javascript and CSS

The journal is making increasing use of the now common features of Javascript and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Ensure that these features are enabled in your browser (in Netscape for example, they can be found under Edit|Preferences|Advanced, and in Internet Explorer under Tools/Internet Options/ under Accessibility, Colors and Security sections). Some navigation and 'housestyle' elements may not look their best if these are not checked. Netscape users note, Netscape depends on Javascript to render style sheets, so if you disable javascript, it will also disable style, however journal functionality will not be affected.
Colorblind readers may experience some problems with our current colour scheme, and we suggest disabling CSS/overriding our colour settings to set your preferred link, background and text colours.

Some articles use plug-ins e.g. for reading/running QTVR, VRML and PDF files. The software is freely available over the web and links to downloads are provided when a plugin is required. N.B. these features might require additional memory above the figure noted in the next section.

Hard Disk, Memory (RAM) and Modems

Accessing and reading the journal does not make heavy demands on disk storage. The journal is only resident on your machine while you are reading it. As long as about 5Mb are free, then there should be no problems. Reading the journal is not heavy on memory, providing that the machine has enough memory in the operating system, anywhere between 8-64 MB should be fine.We endeavour to keep each file less than 100K so that older modems of 28K should be able to download journal files fairly easily. However running a complex query in some of the database sections will slow things down if you have a slow connection. If you can, we recommend you use a 56K modem...the faster the better!

Screen, Keyboard and Pointing Device

Articles are not designed for any particular screen resolution, although most of the webpages were created in 800 by 600 pixels. Some papers may be better viewed at a different resolution but accessibility should not be affected at all. Navigation around the journal can be with a mouse or similar pointer. The keyboard is only necessary in some data interfaces and the search facilities. The journal does not require the use of function keys or CTRL sequences. In fact, key strokes are hardly required at all. Only ASCII characters are needed.

Operating System and Browsers

Internet Archaeology will work on the three major platforms - PC, Mac and Unix. Journal articles are tested in both Netscape and Internet Explorer browsers. Articles are designed using Netscape but care has been taken to ensure that the journal can be read by as many browsers as possible. For example, the journal functions perfectly well in a text-only environment (e.g. Lynx) without any serious usage limitations.