The following is intended to help you effectively and efficiently use the Clan Ewing web site to support your genealogy research. Several common "problems" are discussed below. If you can't find information regarding some difficulty you are having, please take a look at the list of known problems. If you're still stumped, please ask the Web Master for help.

Text Size

If you wish to increase the size of the displayed text, and you are using Interenet Explorer (IE) as your browser, you can use the browser's Text Size facility to magnify the displayed text. (Other browsers have an analogous facility, but you'll have to consult their documentation or sniff around on the menus to find it.) Go to the View menu, select the Text Size menu item, and then select a larger text size. This will enlarge the text except in the navigation bars since they tend to become hard to read and use with larger text sizes.

If you happen to have a mouse with a roller on it, there's an alternative: If you hold down the Crtl key and position the cursor over the displayed text in the window, rolling forward/backward will zoom you in/out. Note that this will enlarge/diminish the size of the text in the navigation bars.

Viewing Documents

Many documents available via thus web site are in PDF format. Viewing these documents requires that you have Acrobat Reader or an Acrobat Browser plugin that you can download for free by clicking on the following icon.

Non-responsive Links

Some links open pages in new windows. We have tried to minimize this, but we have followed various principles in designing this web site. One is these principles, for example, is to open a new window for links that take the viewer to a different web site.

A problem may arise if you maximize your windows so that they fill your screen. Under some versions of some browsers, the new window may open but not be "promoted" to the top of the set of windows being displayed and therefore not visible to you. One thing to do is to check your toolbar to see if there's a new entry for the new window; clicking on the new entry will show the new window. An alternative is to decrease the size of your windows and tile them so that they do not hide each other.

Another source of seemingly non-responsive links is popup-blocking. Popups are those irritating little windows that present "in your face" advertisements when viewing pages on the internet. Most browsers offer the opportunity to block popups. But the Clan Ewing web site's opening of new windows may be interpreted by your browser as an attempt to open a popup and therefore be blocked. Browsers offering a popup-blocking capability also offer the ability to turn popup-blocking off on a link, page or web site basis. You should turn off pop-up blocking on a web site basis when viewing Clan Ewing's web site. You will need to consult your browser's documentation to find out how to do this.

Searching the Web Site

You can search the Clan Ewing web site using a capability provided by FreeFind. Just enter a search phrase (for example, James Ewing) in the text entry box below and click on Find!.

The results of your search will be a list of links to pages that have text matching your search phrase. When you go to any of these pages, you will have to search within the page, using your browsers find in this page capability, to locate the occurrances of the text on the page.

A search phrase such as James Ewing will provide links to pages that have James or Ewing. This list will be very long. You can get a shorter, more specific, list by using a search phrase such as "James Ewing" (with the " characters) which will provide links to pages where James and Ewing appear next to each other on the page.

More complex search phrases, leading to more specific results, are possible. For example, the search phrase ("James Ewing") AND (Pittsburgh) will identify pages on which Both James Ewing and Pittsburgh appear (and not necessarily next to each other). Tips on constructing complex search phrases, as well as advanced search capabilities (for example, the ability to iteratively refine your search), are available by first doing a search and then using the links at the top of the results page.