Far West Masters Help

This page contains tips on dealing with some common problems you might encounter when visiting this web site.

If you still need assistance after checking for solutions in the information provided here, contact the Far West Webmaster.

Help

Problems Accessing Forms and Documents

If you encounter problems trying to view some of the forms or documents on this site, you may be trying to access information in a format which your computer does not currently understand how to use. Although most of the information on this site is published in the standard format supported by all modern web browsers, some forms or documents are provided in alternate formats.

Two common formats for documents that you may encounter are known as PDF, a document format from Adobe Systems that is commonly used for publishing documents on the web, and Microsoft Word, the widely used word processor in the Microsoft Office software. Free software is available from both of these vendors which you can download and install on your computer to enable you to read documents in these formats.

PDF Adobe Reader (PDF)

Various forms posted on our site are provided in PDF format, a standard document format that is widely used on the internet for distributing printable material. If you have problems accessing these forms, such as a message indicating that your computer system does not know how to read this document format, you may not have Adobe's Reader installed on your system.

Tip: links to PDF documents are frequently shown with the PDF image to indicate the format. Links that take you to a standard web page sometimes use the Web page document image.

Get Adobe Reader Click the icon to the left to download a free copy of Adobe Reader from Adobe's web site.
For more information about Adobe's Reader, visit the Adobe Reader information site.

Microsoft Word documents

Note: In general we do not publish content on this web site in the form of Microsoft Word documents, as these files are a proprietary format that requires a Microsoft application to view and may not be be supported on all platforms. The material on this site is always published as standard HTML web pages or as PDF documents, both of which can be accessed on virtually any computer.

If you are unable to access a document in Microsoft Word format, usually indicated by by a .doc file name extension, you most likely do not have the Microsoft Word or Office software installed on your computer (e.g., you may not have a Windows computer or you have an alternate word processor installed such as the Microsoft Works software installed on many home computer systems).

A free download which will allow you to view Word documents is available on the Microsoft web site at the Word Viewer downloads page.

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Old Browsers

We strongly recommend using a modern web browser. This site is built to conform to modern web standards in order to provide the best experience on all commonly used computers (Windows XP/Vista/7, Mac OSX, Linux)

You should be using a browser such Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 7 or 8, Safari 4, or Firefox 3.x. If you're using an older version of any of these browsers, please consider upgrading to a current release to take advantage of all of this site's features.

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Slow Response from the Web Site

Performance problems with slow page display response can have a number of causes:

  • the web site may be experiencing a lot of traffic
  • your ISP may be experiencing a lot of traffic
  • slow dialup connection speed through a modem
  • insufficient memory on your computer

Our recommendation: Please be patient and allow complete pages to download before you try clicking any of the links. Most web browsers display an indication of page loading progress, typically in the "status bar" strip at the very bottom of the window.

Performance problems due to traffic loads on the web site, the internet, or at your ISP are often transitory. If you have persistent problems, you may need to review the connection speeds supported by your ISP and modem.

If you connect to the internet with a dialup connection to your ISP, your modem may be too slow to download our Web pages, causing the page to timeout before it's completely loaded. The problem may also be with the connection speeds supported by your ISP's communication equipment. If the difficulty is caused by a slow modem on your computer, you may wish to consider upgrading it. Slow modem speeds affect your computer's ability to access the Web in general.

Although our Web pages aren't overly large, some do include graphical elements. Your computer may not have enough memory to handle them. If so, you may wish to consider a memory upgrade, if possible. In most cases, memory upgrades improve your PC's performance in general.

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If you still need assistance after checking for solutions in the information provided here, contact the Far West Webmaster.