Lolo National Forest

Site Tips

The following are tips on using this web site, but many apply to web sites in general.

These are not recommendations or endorsements, but are meant to provide information if you need help. You are in charge of your computer and its software; the following is for your information only.

Page Index

Maps | PDF Reader | Large File Sizes | Web Browsers-General | Web Browsers - New Window

Maps

Maps pose interesting challenges as they often contain much graphical detail and are designed for printing on large sheets of paper. Many of our environmental projects have maps that fall into this category.

When viewing a map on the screen with Adobe Acrobat, use the zoom in and zoom out functions to view a particular section of the map.

Printing on 8.5" x 11" paper, a map which was designed for a larger sheet of paper, usually results in an image which is greatly "shrunken" so it fits the paper's dimensions. If you need a full-sized hardcopy, contact the project leader to obtain a printed copy.

Another Display Option - An option for maps that are not displaying correctly in Internet Explorer/Adobe Acrobat is to download/save the file to your hard drive and view it with Adobe Acrobat Reader alone - without the Internet Explorer (IE) web browser. It seems particular versions of IE and Acrobat do not display maps well when asked to work together.

Lastly, you may need to refresh the Adobe Acrobat Reader screen if a map does not fully display - sometimes the label backgrounds look "transparent" instead of white because the Reader does not fully display the image the first time.

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PDF Reader

Many of the documents on this website are in PDF (portable document format). The most well-known reader for pdf's is Adobe Acrobat Reader. Like your web browser, it is recommended that you have a recent version. Older versions cannot read the documents as well.

Adobe Acrobat Reader Tips - For helpful hints on how to use the features within the Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can view the Kootenai NF's helpful information.

Display - If .pdf maps are not displaying properly (lacking color or other features for maps, for instance) and you are using Internet Explorer (IE) as your web browser, you may need to set the Adobe Acrobat Reader so it works independently of IE. The Adobe web site has some information on how "Configuring the browser to open PDF files in an Acrobat window" at: http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/98fe.htm.

Consult the Adobe web site at http://www.adobe.com/ for more information on any other question related to the Adobe Acrobat software.

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Large File Sizes

"Large" depends on your computer's capability so this tip is relative to what you are using to view the Internet.

A 2 megabyte file may take a very long time to download for viewing/saving if you have a slow modem connection or minimal memory for instance. But that same file may be a piece of cake for someone with a DSL or wireless connection and plenty of memory.

If the file you want to view is "large" then you may want to download the file to your hard drive (if you have the disk space) before viewing it.

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Web Browsers - General

It is good to have the most current version of your web browser whether it is Netscape, Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Opera or any other web browser. Please visit the web sites of these products to download the latest copies of their software - most web browsers are free.

In general, older versions of web browsers cannot display web pages as well as new versions can. Web browsers such as Netscape and Internet Explorer have versions 4.x and earlier which cannot fully display today's web technology.

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Web Browsers - New Window

If you want a link to open in a new window in Internet Explorer, hold the shift key down while clicking the link.