Help-Comparing page

Help for Compare Page

I get frustrated having to click back and forth between different windows to compare butterfly pictures. This page is designed to allow the user to view two pictures at the same time. I find this very useful when I am trying to identify an unknown butterfly, when I want to compare variations of a given species, or when I want to see differences between two similar species. Since the same process is followed for loading each picture, two identical frames are used.

  • Load site pictures: in either frame, choose a family from the first drop-down list; click select. Repeat for the species list. Thumbnails of available pictures will load; click on the picture you prefer and it will be presented in the viewer window with a height of 400 pixels. Click on the picture again to enlarge to 500 and then to 700 pixels.
  • Load user pictures: Use the browse button to locate the desired file from your computer; click and it should appear in the viewer window with a height of 400 pixels. As above, you can zoom to 500 or 700 pixels. If this is not sufficient magnification, you need to crop the picture before loading it. (Mozilla browsers will control the picture size as they please.)
        If your picture does not appear: Unfortunately, several recent browsers restrict access to local files. You will need to add "leps.thenalls.net" to your trusted sites before the browser will open files on your computer. (Do this only if you do trust the site!)
        IE7: Tools>Internet Options>Security>Trusted Sites; uncheck "Require server verification" and then add http://leps.thenalls.net.
        Firefox, etc., in Windows XP:  it's a pain! In the "Documents and Settings" folder, search for Mozilla. Expand the subfolders until you find one called "Profiles". That should contain a subfolder with a weird name that contains several files, including one named "prefs.js". (The correct folder is not in "Local settings"!)  Use Notepad or a similar program to create a new file in this folder called "user.js"; copy and paste the following lines into it.

    user_pref("capability.policy.policynames", "localfilelinks");
    user_pref("capability.policy.localfilelinks.sites", "http://leps.thenalls.net");
    user_pref("capability.policy.localfilelinks.checkloaduri.enabled", "allAccess");

         For further help, see:
            http://kb.mozillazine.org/Links_to_local_pages_don't_work
            http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/edit

 

  • Load external web page: simply copy and paste, or type, the full url (beginning with http://) in the space provided. This will load the web page in a frame; scroll to the desired picture. Picture size will be controlled by the web page. Click on provided links to achieve the same result and locate pictures from recommended web sites.