Getting the Most from Living at Lake Chapala
Finding Your Way Around Our Website
Finding your way around our website -- Coming Soon ... read more
Reviewing and Updating Your Account Information
Reviewing and updating your account information -- Coming Soon ... read more
Remeber Me, Log-in Feature
If you want to "auto-magically" log-in to the site
whenever you visit, you can do this by clicking in the "Remember me"
check-box the next time you log-in to our site.
... read more
Password Recovery Feature
A Password Recovery feature was added on Feb. 26, 2008. For new subscribers after
August 20, 2007 the good news is that you are already
"activated" for password recovery – so you don't need to do a thing –
unless you have forgotten your password of course. Long-time subscribers
will need to setup a Security Question and Answer to activate this
feature.
... read more
Getting the Best View
While most computer and browser settings will work just fine as they are,
here are a few things to consider if you want to have the best experience
while visiting Living at Lake Chapala.
... read more
Printing Our Articles
You wouldn’t think printing the same webpages in a consistent format
on different computers would be such a pain, but for a lot of technical
reasons it is. That's one of the reasons we didn't have print friendly
pages until recently.
... read more
Finding Your Way Around Our Website
Finding your way around our website -- Coming Soon.
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Reviewing and Updating Your Account Information
Reviewing and updating your account information -- Coming Soon
Top of Page
Remeber Me, Log-in Feature
If you want to "auto-magically" log-in to the site
whenever you visit, you can do this by clicking in the "Remember me"
check-box the next time you log-in to our site. After that when you
visit our site, you will be automatically logged-in. This will continue
to be the case unless you use the "Log Out" button to manually log out
of the site – if you just close your browser or visit another
site the "Remember me" stays in effect. To accomplish the auto-login, a
securely encrypted cookie is placed on your computer's hard-drive that
will remain there for, oh – about 10 years or so – or until you
manually log-out or delete the cookie. If you are accessing our website
in an internet café, or by using someone else's computer, you
should NOT use the "Remember me" check-box.
The only requirement is that your computer and browser allow the use
of "cookies" – which they do as the "normal" way computers are setup by default.
If you ever delete your cookies, you'll have to log-in manually the next time you visit us.
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Password Recovery Feature
A Password Recovery feature was added on Feb. 26, 2008.
For new subscribers after August 20, 2007 the good news is that you are already
"activated" for password recovery – so you don't need to do a thing –
unless you have forgotten your password of course. Long-time subscribers
will need to setup a Security Question and Answer to activate this
feature.
On a side note, if you try to login with an invalid password too many
times (5 times within 10 minutes) your account will be locked.
This is a prevention against hackers. If that happens, send Judy an email to get your
account unlocked.
Recovery Setup
You only have to activate password recovery one time. You may later change
your security information through the account maintenance feature if you
wish.
The setup can be done one of two ways, depending on whether you are currently
logged-in to your account or not.
Not logged-in
- Go to the log-in page by clicking on the "LOG IN" button in the right-hand
column.
- Click the link below the log-in box that says, "Activate Password Recovery"
to be taken to the page where you fill in your information.
- There are instructions on the form on how to proceed, but basically it's
a matter of filling in your login name, password, and the security question
and answer that you have decided upon.
- Clicking the "Save Information" button will save the security question
and answer information, automatically log-in to the site for you, and
return you to our home page
- That's it – you're done!
Already logged-in
- Click the link in the right-hand column that says, "View / Update your
account information" – it's right below the "Log Out" button. You will
be taken to the "Review Account Information" page.
- On your "Review Account Information" page there is normally one link at
the top, below your account number and name — "Click here to make
changes." If you have not yet activated password recovery, there will
be a second link, "Activate Password Recovery." Click that link.
- There are instructions on the form on how to proceed, but basically it's
a matter of filling in your information – your login name and password
are already filled in for you. Just add the security question and answer
that you have decided upon.
- Clicking the "Save Information" button will save the security question
and answer information, and return you to our home page
- That's it – you're done!
One last note. There are a few requirements for the security question and answer values;
- They both must be at least 6 characters in length.
- Both must be different from your login name or password.
- The question and answer cannot be the same value.
Hope this helps!
Recovery Process
You start the password recovery process from the log-in page, which you
get to by clicking on the "Log In" button on the right-hand column.
At the bottom of the box that is titled, "Please Login Here," there is a
link that says, Forgot your password?
– Click that link.
You will go to a new page that begins the process by asking for your user login name.
There are instructions on that page on how to proceed, but basically
you are asked for your login name, then your security question is
displayed and you are asked to provide the answer.
If you answer correctly, your password will be sent to you via email. There will be a
confirmation page indicating that the password was sent to you. Once
you receive our email, you can go to the login page as normal.
The email address we use is the one that is in your account record – if
it's not current, please update it. We will send you the password
information from our email address, info@mexico-insights.com, which should be
added to your "approved senders" list.
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Getting the Best View
Computer Screen Resolution
While most computer and browser settings will work just fine as they are,
here are a few things to consider if you want to have the best experience
while visiting Living at Lake Chapala.
For best viewing your computer screen should be set to a
resolution of 1024 x 768
pixels or higher. If you bought your computer within
the last few years, it’s likely to have been delivered with those
settings already installed.
Another, lower resolution setting, of 800 x 600 was prevalent in older
computer screens purchased in the ‘90s. The 800 x 600 is starting
to fade away as better, cheaper, and larger screens are replacing the
older monitors. If you have chosen to continue to use the 800 x 600 pixel
setting even when your computer screen supports a higher resolution, it
may because you find the text on the 1024 x 768 screen to be too small
for comfortable reading.
The text gets smaller at those higher resolutions. That’s because
your screen is divided into more pixels, and that means each pixel is
effectively smaller. Since text and image dimensions are usually defined
by the number of pixels, the effect is to make the text size smaller.
Many people are unaware that they can usually enlarge the system default
font (text) size
and still retain the higher screen pixel resolution that makes the images
and other items on your computer screen look clearer and better. This
change affects all text on your system, and should only be used
to offset the effect of changing to a higher resolution,
not to make your browser text larger.
Changing the Web Browser Text Size
There is a setting on almost all
web browsers that allows a change to be made to the default text
size. A change to this setting will be retained for future use after closing
your browser, and will only affect that portion of a web page that supports
relative text sizes. See the end of this article for instructions on how
to change the default text size for the most popular browsers.
Web pages can be designed with text specified to be “fixed”
in size (always the same), to use a “relative” font sizing
technique that allows for the text size to be changed in your browser
settings, or often a combination of both methods.
During our April 2007 site upgrades, we added a number of enhancements.
Now Living at Lake Chapala publishes all articles with the “relative”
text size method. We format the page using the default “medium”
setting for the browser text size as we think the pages look best at this
setting for most readers – and it’s the one most people use.
Those readers who have a preference for larger or smaller type can chose
to change the default text size via their browser settings. This will
cause the page to “flow” differently around pictures, and
in some cases may cause the layout of the text to not be as “pretty”
in older browsers.
Most browsers also have a method to temporarily enlarge or reduce text
– typically it is used as a magnifying method so that small text
can be read. However, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Netscape
all work differently – and sometimes the result will cause the page
layout to look rather messy. These settings are not retained after the
browser is closed.
Browser Types and Versions
Three years ago it was calculated that there were over 245 distinct browsers
in use (including the variations within browser versions, computer platforms,
and operating system versions. That figure didn’t take into account
the different screen sizes and resolutions that people use. All of these
variations much be considered when we are designing page layouts—how
our pages will look to readers. That was three years ago! I don’t
want to know how many variations there are now.
Today's browsers have some great new features and, wonder of wonders,
they are more standards compliant than ever before, and those standards
are not changing as fast as they did a few years ago.
Over 97% of our readers use three major types of browsers: Internet Explorer,
Firefox, and Safari, and most of our users have either Windows or Macintosh
operating systems for their computers. That’s why we concentrate
our efforts to support the most current versions of those browser types,
as well as the most recent previous version, so that we can provide the
best experience for our readers.
What does that mean to you, our readers? Since we can’t possibly
test each issue in all the hundreds of browser variations, we do what
most websites do. We publish our pages using techniques according to current
standards – those that the browser makers are supposed to follow.
Then we figure out how to "fix" the page for the browsers that don’t
quite get it right, without “breaking” the pages for the browsers
that do abide by the standards.
We bet you had no idea that so much went into our efforts each month just
to make our pages look really good on your computer screen! It’s
justs part of what we do, and we’re proud to do it so well.
|
Internet Explorer
|
Firefox
|
Netscape (8)
|
Safari
|
|
Select View from the menu, then click on “Text-size” and select
one of the five sizes listed.
Medium is the default.
|
Select Tools from the menu, then click on “Options” and select
the “Content” tab.
Change the default font size (in pixels). 16 pixels is the default and
is equivalent to the “medium” size in Internet Explorer.
|
Select Tools from the menu, then click on “Options” and select
the “General” tab.
Change the default font size (in pixels). 16 pixels is the default and
is equivalent to the “medium” size in Internet Explorer.
|
TBD
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Printing Our Articles
You wouldn’t think printing the same webpages in a consistent format
on different computers would be such a pain, but for a lot of technical
reasons it is. That's one of the reasons we didn't have print friendly
pages until recently.
While Microsoft's Internet Explorer, FireFox, Netscape and other web browsers
can’t print web pages with the consistency of an Adobe document,
the latest versions of those browsers are getting closer to internet standards
and the result is that it is easier for us to give you fairly consistent
printer-friendly versions of the pages that you see in our magazine.
Every page on the Mexico-Insights.com website will be printed as a “friendly”
version by default – just click on the print button, or
select “Print Preview” to view the page prior to printing.
(Note: The "Old Articles" do not have this feature.)
If you select print preview mode you can adjust the “scale”
or print size (larger or smaller), as well as change other settings to
get the page to look how you want it – or at least close.
Which is the “best” printing browser? Internet Explorer version
7, or Netscape 8.x using IE mode, are my choices for printing. Internet
Explorer version 6 prints fairly well too, but IE7 is easier to use and
seems a little better at arranging the page when adjusting the text size
or doing a “shrink-to-fit” in print preview mode.
Firefox Printing Problems
While I’m a fan of Firefox for browsing and love its numerous
“add-on” applications, it has issues in printing some
web pages. Firefox will lose information during a print request—under
some circumstances. This typically happens when text is "floated" around an image, or
another block of text such as a sidebar, and that floating would occurs at
the end of a page.
This often resulted in an article being "truncated" after the first 2 or 3 pages
— the rest of the article doesn't print at all.
After trying a number of things to work around the Firefox print issue, we finally had to
turn-off the floating function when printing in Firefox (and certain other browsers). This is
NOT a problem that programmers of Firefox created per se, but is an error in the web page
rendering engine (Gecko) that the Firefox browser uses.
So the articles will take a little more paper to print in Firefox, since the
images are printed on a "line" by themselves and the normally wrapped text starts on the
next line.
This issue does not affect Internet Explorer; it has it's own quirks.
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