About This Site
Purposes
This site is intended to chiefly to be a source of timely information for members and friends of the Great Neck Choral Society.
As the navigation panel at the left of the screen suggests, you will find ...
The navigation panel also displays a few outside links that may be of interest to those seeking choral concerts in the metropolitan area or to those seeking vocal scores or sheet music.
Desktop icon
For easiest access to the site, we suggest that you
create a desktop shortcut. You will probably find that you cannot do this the usual way, i.e., by right-clicking on the
displayed home page and selecting shortcut. That is because the website has been designed with "frames" that divide the
screen, and the shortcut
you produce that way will be a shortcut only to the one frame you click on. The frames were not created to annoy you but
to allow the navigation panel to stay right there as you move
around through the site.
So, use the following procedure to create shortcut (use a single or double click depending on the
preferences you have established): 1) click on My Computer; 2) click on Hard Disk C; 3) click on Documents & Settings;
4) click on All Users; 5) click on Desktop; 6) right-click, then click on New; 7) click on Shortcut; 8) type http://www.gnchoral.org
(be exact); 9) click on Next; 10) type
GN Choral Society (or whatever label you prefer); 11) click on Finish. The icon will appear on your desktop.
Disclaimer
This site is provided gratis by the Great Neck Choral Society. All reasonable efforts have been made to insure the accuracy of all information presented in our own pages, but we cannot guarantee that changes in the real world will be immediately reflected in this site. Neither the Site Editor nor the Society assumes any responsibility for the accuracy, taste, or relevance of any linked non-Society website.
Limitations
The most important limitations are technical. This site was designed using a Windows XP personal computer and
Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 7. It would have been too
time-consuming, and possibly beyond our competence, to test and revise the site to suit also older versions of Windows
(let alone
Linux or the Macintosh operating system). The site does work, albeit imperfectly, with the Mozilila Firefox
browser.
In addition, as is true for all Internet sites, pages containing large photos, or many photos, will load very
slowly if you do not have a broadband--DSL or cable--connection. If you have a slow connection, you will encounter
noticeable delays in loading "picture galleries," as well as sound (.mp3) files. In most cases where such delays will occur a warning is posted.
Browser. Chances are that you are using the Internet Explorer browser, since it comes with Windows
and has captured
about 85% of the browser market. But if you are using an older version of IE, it may be advisable to update it, which does not
cost anything. Click on
browser update to find the version 7 update (if you already have this version installed, you will get a message
from Microsoft and you can halt the upgrade process). If you don't see an option to download the update at this site, click
on alternate site instead, type
"internet explorer" into the
first dialog box and "version 6" into the second dialog box; then press Enter to reach the upgrade site.
If you have another browser and Internet Explorer is not your default browser, we suggest you make it so. Both Netscape and Firefox respond poorly to some
standard HTML code used to create these pages. Click
successively on Start; Set Program Access and Defaults; and Custom. Select Internet Explorer, and click OK.
Screen. As to screen resolution, the resolution selected, 1024 by 768 pixels, is the middle of the three available in Windows XP for a 17-inch monitor. If the opening screen for this website does not fill the screen, on one hand, or overflows the screen, on the other hand, you should change the resolution if your system permits. To do this, click successively on Start, Control Panel, Appearance and Themes, and the option to "change the screen resolution." Move the dial pointer to select 1024 x 768, and click on OK. If only a lower resolution, such as 800 x 600, is available, do not despair. Most of the pages will work but will be less attractive: The type will be a bit large, and the index links at the top of many pages will not "break" correctly (but you can still use them).
Pizazz. There isn't any, and intentionally so. We have seen too many web pages so overloaded with graphics, boxes, banners, blinkers, and varied type fonts that you can hardly figure out where to go. We have designed this site to be clean, simple, and easy to use. Such design also allows the pages to load faster. We have tried to speed up loading of pages by restricting the resolution of photos and, mostly, avoiding large ones. If you have a broadband connection-- cable or DSL--you won't care about this point, but if you are using a phone connection you'll appreciate it.
Technical
The following notes are provided in case someone else wants to pick up the
responsibility for this website later on and, possibly, to assuage the curiosity of those who may be familiar with
web page design.
No HTML editor was used to develop the code, in the belief that it would be preferable to have full
control and understanding of the code used.
With minor exceptions, we used only basic HTML code and took as our principal guide the latest edition
of Elizabeth Castro's book, "HTML 4 for the World Wide Web." The exceptions are a few snippets of JavaScript and Perl.
We adopted the "transitional" option, which allowed us to use a few "deprecated" tags, principally
those to denote boldface and italics.
An external style sheet, called gncs-style.css, is referenced for virtually every page. A few
pages, notably the home page, carry local styles as well.
Picture pages, to date, are laid out using tables.
Photos are sized so that they will fill the designed space at screen resolutions ranging from
a low of 800 x 600 to a high of 1064 x 768.
A good source of further help in HTML markup is Elizabeth Castro's HTML 4 Forum.
Future
We intend to improve this website as time allows. We will be guided in part by suggestions
from users.
A common fate of small websites developed by amateurs is a failure to maintain and update the site. This
typically happens when the originator loses interest or energy and no one is ready to step in. To guard against this fate,
we urge anyone who may be interested in helping manage this site to step forward. We'd be happy to share the load.
Contact the Site Editor.