What About Technical Issues?

Technology getting you down? Read our tips if you'd like help optimally viewing our site and others and exploring links to some useful downloads, tools, and resources.

Optimizing with browsers

There are a number of things that you can do to optimize the look of nces.ed.gov/nceskids on your computer. We recommend browsing with either:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0

• Mozilla's Firefox 1.5

These browsers can all be downloaded for free. We've designed our pages to take advantage of the latest browser features, including Java Script, but we also make sure that our pages can be viewed by older browsers.

If you're not using Firefox or Internet Explorer, you will also get a good view by using any browser that supports tables, forms, and images.

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Pathway to better resolution

We try to develop our site for varying graphics resolutions. While we currently develop most of our pages for 800 x 600 resolution, we try to ensure that if you are using other resolutions you can easily view our site as well. Of course our pages can be viewed in 1024 x 768 and 1280 x 1024 for those of you who use those resolutions.

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Start your surfing with us

When your browser opens does it default to a generic corporate site? Why not start with us instead? Get a little smarter, create a graph, dare to compare, learn a word a day. Check us out.

This general (browser versions differ slightly) three step process takes less than one minute!
Choose your browser from the two options below and follow the appropriate instructions.

Internet Explorer

1. Select "Tools" and " Internet Options" from the toolbar at the top of the screen.
   
2. Click on the tab labeled "General" and select "Home Page" from the options.
   
3. Paste or type http://nces.ed.gov into the "Address" box and Click "Apply" then "OK."

Mozilla's Firefox 1.5

1. Select "Tools" then "Options" from the toolbar at the top of the screen.
   
2. Select the tab labeled "general" and locate the entry for "Home Page."
   
3. Paste or type http://nces.ed.gov in the "Location" dialog box. Click "OK."

Wasn't that simple?

It's done. The next time that you open your browser, you'll begin with us, and we like that.

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Flash

NCES uses Adobe Flash in some of our applications. Adobe Flash Player displays web application front-ends, high-impact website user interfaces, interactive online advertising, and short-form to long-form animation. Designers and developers use Adobe Flash MX to develop distinctive and compelling content, revolutionary user interfaces, and rich applications for the web. It is pre-installed in most web browsers and on most computers. It is included in Windows 98 (including all new Windows 98 and Windows XP computers), Netscape Navigator, Apple Macintosh operating systems, America Online, and WebTV, among others.

How to obtain Adobe Flash Player

Click here to obtain a free Adobe Flash Player.

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Video and Audio Standards

About Video and Audio Standards
We have adopted Advanced Streaming Format (ASF) as our standard. You can view videos right away with Windows Media Player, or download for easier viewing. The downloaded version will always be better quality than the streamed or viewable copy for performance reasons. The Windows Media Player should automatically download any needed codecs (these compress the video and are needed to view certain formats). This will also enable you to hear the WAV audio files we have in our glossary.

How to obtain a Video/Audio Player

Click here to acquire Windows Media Player.

Download some timesaving tools

The links below provide some useful downloads to help you out in viewing our site as well as others.

Internet Explorer
Download the latest version of this popular browser to access the latest features on the NCES site and the rest of the web.

Mozilla's Firefox 1.5
Download the latest version of this popular browser to access the latest features on the NCES site and the rest of the Web.

Microsoft Word Viewer
This allows users to share Word documents even if the other person does not have Word installed on their machine. It also enables you to view any Word publications posted on the NCES site.

Microsoft Excel Viewer
This works analogously to the Word viewer, allowing Excel users to share documents even if the other person does not have Excel installed on their machine. It also enables you to view any Excel tables posted on the NCES site.

Microsoft Powerpoint Viewer
This is the Powerpoint equivalent of the Word and Excel viewers. It also enables you to view any Powerpoint presentations posted on the NCES site.

Download Time Calculator
Visit this site to find out download times for various modem and other connection speeds. Just select your connection speed and specify your file size.

StatSoft
A Statistical Glossary.

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