FAQs? Need Help? Problems with Seeing New Salem?

I want this website to work for you. Unfortunately, as a one-person project, it's not always possible to anticipate and prevent every problem. There are a few simple things though that might help if you run into issues with this site.

If you experience problems,please use my contact page to send me a message with an explanation of what problems you encountered, so that I can try to fix them.

What's the Catch? Who is Paying for This? I love New Salem. It inspires and challenges me. It combines my love of photography, nature and history. This is a way for me to share that with others. I receive no outside financial support for this website and pay for it out of my own pocket.

Are You Associated with New Salem. No, I am simply a person who loves New Salem and feels connected to history and nature when I visit the site. At the left are links to several official New Salem sites.

Can I Buy Prints? Can I Reproduce Pictures from this Site? All images are copyrighted. You may not reproduce images without my permission. If you are interested in buying a picture for personal use or display, please use my contact form.

Is There a Book? I originally began this project with the hope of publishing a book. However, without sponsorship or other financial support, I could not produce a book that would both do justice to the images and be affordable. I still hope to eventually publish this in a traditional book format, but in the meantime, this was a way to get the content to the public at low cost.

Historical Errors: I've used generally accepted stories and sources to tell about New Salem and Lincoln. Still, I am no historian, so if you find an error that should be corrected, please let me know.

Image Loading: Since this is a photo essay, I've tried to provide the highest quality images possible, within the constraints of the internet. It may take a few seconds for pages to load. In most cases, the images will have loaded long before you finish reading the accompanying text.

If you experience delays longer than that, I'd like to hear about them. Please use my contact page.

Tablet Users: One of my goals is to make this website "tablet friendly." That means I do not use Flash on this site, but instead all slideshows, etc. are in HTML format. Don't worry if you have no idea what that means, it simply means that it should work on tablets, as well as desktops.

Smart Phone Users: I've tested this site extensively with an iPhone. To be frank, it works but because it is a graphics-heavy site, the experience can be less than ideal.Most of the problems come from pages timing-out before a photo gallery finishes loading. I've tried to optimize the galleries, so that there won't be timeout errors. But to some degree that depends on the network. Try hitting the refresh symbol. In most cases, that will fix the problem. You may find downloading the PDF version to be preferable.

Mouseover Images: Desktop and laptop users will find several examples where one picture changes to another when you slide your mouse over the first image. Unfortunately, there is no directly comparable action for Tablets, Smart Phones and other touch devices. If you touch an image that has a "mouseover event" associated with it, it will change to a new image. (Here is an example)

Unfortunately with tablets, the image won't change back. But there are some simple ways to see the orignal image. You can hit "refresh" on your browser and the page will reload with the original picture. Or you can go on to the next page and then go back to the page, and the original image will have reloaded.

Slideshow Doesn't Load: Under some conditions, a slideshow may "timeout" before it loads. In most cases, hitting the "refresh" button on your web browser will fix that.

My Browser is Warning Me about this Website: Internet Explorer and some other browsers automatically warn users about JavaScripts. Here is the problem: to make a website tablet-friendly requires using "JavaScript" instead of "Flash." Neither is a genuine problem, but unfortunately some browsers automatically block and issue warnings about JavaScript, while iPads block Flash. In my opinion, it is all pretty ridiculous, but since the world seems to be moving toward JavaScript instead of flash, that's the direction I've taken with this website. If you want to read more, try this. Note for computer experts: I make no claim to be an expert, so if you don't like this explanation, please write a better one for me and I'll post it.

PDF Version: I have created a PDF verision of this site (Adobe's Portable Document Format). Internet Access within New Salem State Historic Site is not always reliable. If you are going to be visiting the site and want to make sure you can access "Seeing New Salem" from your tablet or smart phone while you are actually at New Salem you may want to download the PDF Version. You'll lose some of the features like slideshows, but you'll find almost all the photos and all of the text in the PDF File. The PDF book is 86 pages, so it can take a minute to load. I have had some experience with the PDF file hanging up. If that happens, try hitting refresh.

Thanks for Visiting: Sincerely, Mark Gordon