| About Us We are an informal group of artists, writers, enthusiast microscopists, and computer techies working together from different countries for free. We dedicate our skills towards promoting the study of the very small world around us - the microscopical world. We started very small but due to the loyalty of our visitors - our site is now probably one of the most visited microscopy sites in the world. This gives us an added responsibility to ensure it remains vibrant and caters for a diverse range of tastes and likes. There are only two people managing this site on behalf of many. A lot of work is done to ensure 'enthusiast microscopy' effectively competes against corporates, and internet dominance by parties better funded but commercially-aimed. Our pioneering work over the years, supported by our unpaid contributors, and our visitors, has triggered recognition of 'enthusiast microscopy' by web sites that previously failed to see this audience and pursuit existed. Now the web is alive with resources catering for the enthusiast! Like to know more about us? |
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| First visit to us? If this is your first visit to us, it can be daunting to suddenly be presented with so much work all in one place. If you came via a web engine, maybe you are looking for information on a specific topic or subject. Try our front page search to see if this helps! If you would like a general idea of the usefulness and massive input into the suite of pages and contributions 'cap-badged' as Mic-UK... why not try one of the three Ezines we founded - each designed for a slightly different audience:- Ezines and sections Micscape Magazine - for traditional perspectives and information on Microscopy - is published monthly on the 13th. The editorial responsibility rests with Dave Walker, in the UK and co-founder of Micscape. The Ezine takes most of our time to produce and constantly requires the editor's unpaid attention and input. Many contributors from many walks of life contribute to these publications freely, and so help to make the magazine successful. Contributions from you for the magazine is encouraged and welcomed. Without them... there would be no magazine! Please forward your queries and comments to the editor Beyond Magazine - and its sister Ezine 'Beyond for kids' are two science magazines with a high focus on microscopy at a popular level. These Ezines were originally founded by our group, were subsequently entirely managed by Marly Caine and R.M. Caine in the USA. They evolved the two magazines into extraordinary and out-standing popular science publications which offered a vibrant and refreshing look into these areas. Sadly, our young and vibrant friend, Marly Caine, died in 2002 - leaving behind a legacy and an internet memorial to her fantastic but short life. We miss you Marly! Other sections These are numerous but - in the main - are less frequently updated. You may wish to consider each - one at a time - in subsequent visits to see which one might prove most useful to your needs. Contributions for other sections are welcomed to. All contributions remain the copyright of the contributor and we will do our best to ensure your work, licensed to us for publication, is not used elsewhere without your explicit permission. |
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| Book-marking our site It's a good idea to bookmark us straight away. Once you have done this, you will know that you can always find us again. If you have a major interest in microscopy, it is well worth establishing a regular visit to our site as it is updated constantly. Please try and bookmark our front page which is site A: www.microscopy-uk.org.uk site B: www.microscopy-uk.net Book-marking Articles and pages Our Toolbar at the top of the page will help you book-mark pages you see below the toolbar. It looks like this:  This icon should be clicked to bookmark the page below the toolbar. This only works so far for Explorer Browser users. In Netscape, move the mouse cursor into the area of the page you wish to bookmark, well below the menu toolbar, and right click your mouse: a netscape pop-up menu appears to offer an option to Bookmark the frame. Select and left-click on this. Opera users can use the same method as Netscape users. You must wait for the page to fully load before bookmarking it, otherwise you will simply bookmark the main index and not the page you are interested in. |
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There is someone here at the end of your emailed enquiries and we try to help as much as possible. We receive many emails looking for help. We often find though that a few people contact us for information already available on our site. We welcome your enquiry but it helps us if you have had a quick look around to see if your question can be answered by information maintained on the site first. If you are not certain who to direct your email to, please send it here to the
Coordinator.
We used to maintain a public Forum by Marly Caine who also produced 2 independent science and microscopy ezines. A forum enables you to ask questions and maintain contact with other people in the world interested in Microscopy. The Forum is public which means anyone can read it your message or place one themselves. We no longer run our own forum but encourage you to use the one of the Forums listed on our community page. |
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| Contributing You may be inspired to contribute something yourself to our web site or magazine. This is highly encouraged and we will help you to achieve this. You keep copyright to all your work, we simply help you get it read by a world audience. Enquiries about contributing material for any of our sections should go to the Coordinator. Enquiries about contributing material solely for Micscape Magazine should go to the Editor. |
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There are many extra add-ons you can obtain - most free - to enhance your browser and the way it delivers content to you from the internet. There are movie players, music and sound players, graphic players, and loads more. We have some sections and content where you will need to have some extra capability for your browser. If you visit one of our pages that requires the use of a plug-in or helper, it is worth downloading the appropriate software as it will help you when you visit other sites. Some of the extra software required can be located by visiting our tools page. Up until March 1998, we were using the Intel Indeo Codec version 3.0 to create our AVI movies. Pages created since April 1998 may often use their version 5.3 Codec where we have included large AVI movies in the page. This version produces better results over the web. We recommend you get this codec (player) for use on your PC. Download it now (800Kbytes) AVI files are movie files designed to be played back on PCs. They will not work on MACs. We try and produce movies in our movie section for MACs too by including Mpeg format files. These can be played back on both PCs and MACs. Wave files, Midi, MP3, Vivo, Real Wave file are sound files that can be listened to on PCs. They can be quite large files so we often convert them into formats that require less file size and download time. MP3 format offers good quality sound. We tend to use Vivo format sound files as their file-size is very small but the sound quality is still very good. Vivo is also used to produce lower quality movie files which download very fast. You need a free vivo player to listen to them. Please see our tools page for obtaining a player. An alternative to Vivo is the Realvideo or Realaudio format. We use these too. You need the Realplayer to see or hear these files. Please visit our tools page to find out how to obtain these players. Midi files are the smallest sound files you will find. Most modern browsers will play these without a plug-in. |
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| Donations We do everything for no pay. Our contributors, the real people who make this site and Micscape Magazine possible, allow us to publish their articles without receiving payment for their work. We pay the costs of running the site and these costs are ever-rising. We wish to keep all material freely available. To do this, we need your help by way of small donations. Please click here to consider this further! |
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| Explorer Browser We prove and test our pages using Microsoft Explorer Browser. Most pages should work on Explorer version 4.0 and above, and people using Explorer 3.0 should still be able to view a huge majority of the pages. Recent versions of the browser can be obtained from the Microsoft Corporation Web Site. |
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| Netscape Browsers We no longer test our pages with the Netscape Browser but everything should be accessible without any major problems with the more recent versions of this Browser. Some of the more fancy stuff (we don't use much of that) incorporating javascript coding may present Netscape Browsers with a few problems. |
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| Other Browsers We do not test our site to see how it works in other browsers. Opera is a good browser and we did run some one-off tests to see how it works with our pages. It worked okay except with the few sophisticated pages we carry which employ the use of the JAVA protocols. It appears there are several invocations of the JAVA language. |
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| Plug-ins Plug-ins are independent modules which are add ons to your browser. There are many but the current Microsoft Explorer Browser includes most of the commonly used plug-ins in its default package. If you are using an older version of a browser, you may need to obtain a plug-in to view some of our videos where they are presented in a streaming format. |
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| Java Java is a sophisticated programming language which provides enhanced effects and interactivity to web pages. The downside is that its use can add severely to the loading time required for each page. We don't use it. |
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| Flash Flash is the defacto programming methodology for providing enhanced media-rich pages on the web. Its slow! It makes page access very slow. We would like to use it, and may well do when bandwidth increases more commonly for everyone. Meanwhile, we might have the odd page or two which includes Flash encoding but 99.9% of our stuff is Flash-free. |
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| Javascript Javascript (not to be confused with Java) is a widely used programming methodology used to manage and control web navigation and to enhance normal html pages. It works well although there are separate versions for Explorer and Netscape Browsers. We use Microsoft's Javascript and Explorer users should be okay accessing all our pages with browsers version 3.0 and above. |
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| Cookies Cookies are small files created on your PC by the web site you visit. They are often used to automatically store password and access information on your PC to help you invisibly on you return to the web site. We don't use them! |
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| Linking to us A lot of web sites link to our site or to individual articles on our site. If you wish to link to our main index at www.microscopy-uk.net/index.html you do not need to ask so long as you make it clear that the link on your page is either to Micscape Magazine or Microscopy-UK. If you wish to link to one of the articles or pages on our site, you are welcome to if you host a non profit making site like our own but please ask permission if it is a commercial site. Where permission is given, clearly state on your page that it's an external resource. If your site uses frames ensure a new window is opened for links to us. See also permissions below! How do you know what the URL is of the page you wish to link to? We run a complex page and menu system. When reading any page or article, you can find its exact URL by clicking on the 'Link URL' hypertext link at the top of the screen to the right. This will open up a box from which you can cut and paste the specified URL. |
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We like to be asked if you wish to use anything from this site. The authors of any articles or pages should be contacted directly (via the email address in any given page) if you wish to use their work in any way. If you are commercial - we would be uncomfortable with you using any material from here without obtaining permissions first. Invariably we grant permissions of use for most of the work here, often for free, sometimes for a small donation. Asking us is is a good policy and far better than the consequences of us finding you are using material from here without permission. We do check! |
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| Non-profit We are a not-for-profit site. We receive some sponsorship from Brunel Microscopes who run the online shop. We are dependent upon sponsorship and donations from you to keep the site running. We deliberately keep the site as ad-free as possible and limit any advertising to our main index page or menu system, with the exception that we have included a single link in our Micscape pages to help readers access our online shop for trusted resources. We believe our visitors wish to see the content and not be constantly irritated by advertising and requests to click here or there to see this commodity or that. Refreshing isn't it?! |
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| Commercialism Maybe read the item above about non-profit! Note on commercial queries or those regarding our sponsor's shop: Please contact our sponsors Brunel Microscopes directly, the Microscopy-UK site is an educational one with no commercial aspects. |
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| Advertising with us With typically a million page accesses a month, our site is a prime target for commercial enterprises wishing to tap into our 250,000 visitors plus. With a small exception, we ensure they don't bother you through our pages. If a company wishes to advertise with us, they should contact the coordinator. Advertising is accepted on our front page only and a donation will be requested. Such advertising will be considered but permission may be refused if the advertising is considered inappropriate or simply not desired by us for any reason. |
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| Mirrored Sites A and B In Spring 2003, we were holding data in access of 400 Mbytes which was being transferred at a rate of over 25 Gigabytes a month to over 70,000 visitors per month. An extraordinary burden was placed on our server presence in the states. To ease this burden and keep access fast, we opened a mirror site B on a different server at a physically different location in the states. Now you access either site dependending on access speeds of both and select one to use which works best for you at te time you are browsing. Feb2006. Due to the doubling of admin, the mirror site has been suspended but remains an option to reinstate in the event of a major server crash. Saving
pages for offline use Mozilla
Firefox: A free, small, downloadable browser which is
highly regarded and secure. This browser's 'File Save As' does
work successfully with our site. Printing: The site menu frame can hinder proper printing of articles. Here's a few hints. Explorer 7.0: The new version of Microsoft's browser does a much better job than previous versions for printing web pages with text / images. Images aren't fragmented and layout is usually retained. In 'Print Preview' choose 'Only the selected frame' from drop down menu at top. Then select % reduction to suit. Mozilla: The current version 1.5.0.9 (Jan. 07) seems to fragment image heavy articles and Explorer 7.0 is recommended. For text only or with smaller images, right click article online and select 'This frame' then 'Save frame as'. This will save article to local PC. Then open this file and print locally to suit. |
All material is © Microscopy-UK and their contributors and associates 1995 - present.
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