Introduction

A brief introduction ...

Site Description

This site was primarily devoted to pictures through travel. As such, it was intended to elicit curiosity and encourage you to travel to the sites that interest you. Because it a site devoted to pictures, clutter was reduced to a minimum to allow one to focus on the picture but still scan through the images with minimal interaction. Since you have reached this point, you have discovered that the menus are hidden unless you move your mouse over a sensitive area on the page. The sensitive areas are the upper left hand corner, the copyright declaration and the page’s title. For the majority of pages, moving the mouse pointer over the upper left hand corner or the title will cause the Site Menu and additional descriptive information to be displayed. Moving the mouse pointer over the copyright declaration will cause all detracting information to disappear. In those cases where images are not important the Site Menu will automatically appear when the page has been loaded. The copyright sensitivity remains. See the illustrations below.

Please note, I have considered the possibility that you might want to have more than one window open at the same time. Any help, satellite image or full image map automatically opens a new window. The Site Menu is available on each of these pages. This allows you to use the second window to pursue whatever you want. Keep in mind that the number of windows may become arbitrarily large.

Site Menu

The Site Menu provides global transportation throughout the site. It exists on the home page in a slightly different form. Additionally, many pages have Page Menus as illustrated on the left. Page Menus provide transportation within the page and are only available on long pages. Not shown in the illustration is the Gallery Location information shown when you are looking at travel gallery pages. Below the theater mask and above the line, you will find a list of titles. This list shows the parent gallery pages for the current page. Clicking or touching any item in the list will take you to that page.

Image Access, Getting Started

In general, travel gallery pages are arranged in a hierarchical fashion, i.e. Gallery, Country, State or Province, City, Attraction for example. Each level in the hierarchy, except the lowest, is the parent of the next level down. All sequencing remains at a given level of the hierarchy. For instance, the next item in a list of countries is the next country, not the first city in the country. The Table of Contents is a list of parents and provides direct access to any level of the hierarchy except the lowest.

There are four general ways to initiate access to the gallery of travel images available on the site:

Through the Table of Contents, the preferred mechanism for perusing the site
Through the list of countries available on the home page (moving your cursor over the image on the home page will cause it to appear)
Through the Galleries item on the Site Menu which will provide access to each country
Through the Collections item on the Site Menu. The initial page will provide a list of collections. There are no collections currently defined. Clicking on or touching a collection will provide a set of thumbnail images belonging to the collection. Clicking on the thumbnail will take you to the image.

Image Information

When you have arrived at the image or group of images, additional transportation will allow you to explore. The four illustrations (labels in blue) below show the available information / transportation. There are basically two types of pages, one showing all of the images and / or groups of images in a category (the top two illustrations) and those providing a single image (the bottom two illustrations). Each type has two invocations, one showing basic information (simple) and one showing all associated information cataloged in the site (complex).

Group, Simple	Group, Complex

Image, Simple	Image, Complex

Illustration Labels

The following is a list of illustration labels and their meaning:

Available Information: A list of codes describing hidden information on simple pages.
Child Image or Group: Thumbnails referencing the children of the current page. It may represent a single image or group of images. When clicked or touched, the represented page will be displayed.
Copyright: Copyright Information. Moving your cursorr over or touching it will cause a complex page to revert to a simple one.
Description: A brief description of the page item. If present circa information is provided. Circa provided the time frame associated with the image, not the item on the page.
Discussion: A more extensive description of the page item and / or my comments. Optional
Gallery Location: A list of parents, grandparents, etc. for the page
Identifier and Cataloged: The numerical identifier of the page and the date and time the page information was last updated.
Next: Hot spots when clicked or touched will advance to the next image at the current in the hierarchy.
Previous: Hot spots when clicked or touched will advance to the previous image at the current level in the hierarchy.
Reference/s: External links to sites providing additional information. Optional. External site access.
Return: Optional quick access to selected previous pages. Click to follow the link. Browser back returns to the previous page only. Optional.
Satellite Image Access: When clicked or touched will take you to a satellite image associated with the page.
Site Menu: See above.
Slide Show Control: Allows one to start, stop and resume a slide show.
Title: The name of the page. When touched or clicked it will take you to the parent page. Converts a simple page into a complex one when you move your cursor over it..

Navigation Bar

Previous Parent First Child Next Return

The Navigation Bar, directly under the title, provides transportation to the previous gallery page, the parent gallery page, the first child gallery page, the next gallery page and the return page. All of the items are optional. Clicking on the item of interest will take you to the associated page.

	previous gallery page at the current hierarchical level
	parent gallery page
	first child page
	next gallery page at he current hierarchical level
	return page

Gallery Hot Spots

For those of you that have tablets, touching an item is generally interpreted by the device as clicking on it or moving the mouse pointer over it. Please keep in mind that the the picture sizes were selected for a full screen device so the intended impact may not be that intended. I have only checked this on Android and Windows tablets, not an IPAD. Because of the potential conflict between using the page title to return to the previous page and activating the site menu, touching the upper left hand corner of a screen will activate the site menu without invoking the undesired return to a previous page action.

Placing your mouse pointer over or touching the title or upper left hand corner of the page will cause it to turn from the simple presentation to the complex one. Placing your mouse pointer or touching the copyright will cause a complex page to become a simple one. Clicking or touching a map, a reference, a satellite co-ordinate, any thumbnail, a line item in the Site Menu, the next link thumbnail or arrow, the previous link thumbnail or arrow, or an item in the access history will change pages. Clicking on the Start Slide Show button will initiate a show of all items in the current level (as in the level of indentation on the Table of Contents page). Once a slide show is running, you may cancel the show to remain on a page for a longer period of time or resume the show to advance to the next page. Resuming the show will advance to the next page without waiting for the 6 second timer to expire. I currently do not have a way for you to set the time interval. Naturally, you may click any hot spot on the page at any time to go to another page. This will terminate the slide show. The discussion is just that, a brief comment on the group or image.

Note that satellite access will open a new window in a separate thread as will references and help. If you have pop-ups blocked, the window will not open. In IE you may enable popups for a single chick by holding down the ALT and CTRL keys and clicking on the item. Clicking on coordinates will take you to a Google satellite display of the item in the title. Clicking on a reference will access the site of interest. If the site is Wikipedia, it will just say Wikipedia. The same is true for UNESCO. For all other sites, the URL is shown so you may decide on the course that you wish to follow.

Many page items are dependent upon the amount of information that I have provided. Items without content will not be shown. Also note that slide shows are conditional and depend on the state of the topic, i.e. if the images have been sequenced. In summary:

moving your cursor over or touching the Title will cause a simple page to become a complex one
clicking or touching the arrow pointing left directly under the Title will take you to the previous item.
clicking or touching the arrow pointing right directly under the Title will take you to the next item,
if the page is simple of complex image, clicking the Title will send you to the parent page, if there is one
moving your cursor over or touching the copyright will cause a complex page to become a simple one
clicking on or touching a thumbnail image will access the related page, an image or another set of thumbnail images
clicking on or touching a line item in the site menu will take you to that page
clicking on or touching a map thumbnail in the site menu will take you to a full image of the map
clicking on or touching the next image will take you there
clicking on or touching the previous image will take you there
clicking on or touching a reference will open a new window with the reference material and retain the current window
clicking on or touching the coordinate (Satellite Access) button will open a new window providing a satellite view of the item on the current page (Note that it has the standard Google controls which allow one to change altitude, move and convert the satellite image to a map, etc..)
clicking on or touching any line item in the Access Summary will return you to that item, the Access Summary may be found at the top of the Site Menu
clicking on or touching the Start Slide Show button will advance you to the next image and continue advancement every 6 seconds until you return to the starting point.
clicking on or touching the Cancel Show button will stop the show indefinitely
clicking on or touching the Resume Show will advance to the next page and resume page changes every 6 seconds
for images, clicking on or touching the top half of the image will take you to the parent page
for images, clicking on or touching the lower left side of the image will take you to the previous image if one is defined
for images, clicking on or touching the lower right side of the image will take you to the next image if one is defined

Additional Information

A note about the availability of complex page information: There may or may not be additional information shown when a simple page becomes complex. Since you may advance to the next page, previous page or parent page by clicking or touching the different parts of the image or using the arrows, there is no need to transform the simple page into a complex one unless there is additional information. The system will notify you about the availability of additional information by displaying a list of additional information, enclosed in parentheses, at the end of the page title. Any discussion, the Item Identifier, the catalog information, the Next and Previous Image thumbnails, any references, satellite access and the slideshow controls, etc. are always available on the complex page. The codes in the Additional Information list are:

c: comments and descriptions
m: map
r: reference link/s
s: satellite image access

Sequencing

In general any item may be sequenced or not sequenced. Solitary items are not sequenced, they have no next and previous links. An example is the Gallery page. When an item is sequenced the next and previous links are in place. When an item is not sequenced they are not. While cataloging a group, sequencing is delayed until the group has been completed. Keep in mind that the site is under development so it is possible to encounter un-sequenced groups. Sequences wrap, i.e. the image after the last one is the first one.

Group Thumbnails

Group thumbnail pictures may or may not have names identifying the item. If they identify a group of images they always have a name identifying them. If there is a name and if it is in italics then the associated item has a group page associated with it, i.e. many images. If the name is not in italics, then a single image is associsted with it. Clicking any thumbnail will cause the associated group or image to be displayed. During development, this visual clue is not valid for incomplete group items. See the image counts in the Table of Contents for completed items. Additionally, thumbnails may be rectangular or square. If they are square they will lead you to panorama. Panoramas may be horizontal or vertical. Panoramas are all constructed from multiple images. Because of that they may have minor perspective aberrations. Panoramas are expected to be larger than the monitor that ypu are using. Use the scroll bar to move around in the image.

Inage Identifier

Each gallery page has an identifier and cataloging information just above the copyright information. The this information is visible when detail information is displayed. Please refer to this information when contacting me about a specific page.

All of the pictures except those identified by the name of the photographer are mine. They are pictures from various trips undertaken between 1963 and the present. The trips were trips of pleasure, business trips and trips associated with family. They were taken with family members, friends, travel companions, and acquaintances or by myself. I love to travel, particularly road trips! The pictures are those of things that I perceived as interesting, beautiful, opportunistic, and / or surprising. For a given site, I have tried to present a brief photographic essay. Within a specific topic, order may be determined by my trip through the site. Items without temporal significance are in alphabetical order.

As you go through the site please keep in mind that it a work in progress. I have many thousand pictures, I am still taking trips and there are a few pictures which remain on film(120mm). There is a Change Log which will alert you to the new features, improvements, and expanded gallery images. In general one can access new images through the table of contents. Items supported by images are active links to available pages.

For each image and thumbnail set there is a page identifier just above the copyright information. The identifier is visible when detail information is displayed. Please refer to this number when contacting me about an image or thumbnail set. Many images have the same name so the identifier is the easiest way to identify a paricular page.

Please visit References for acknowledgements and references to sites that are of interest to all travelers.