Help!
Not sure how to use this site? Read through the info here.
If you are having trouble downloading any of the files, you may need a free player or viewer from one of these companies, or simply the newest version.
For Adobe Reader (pdfs) go to the Adobe website
For Google Earth (kmzs) go to the Google Earth download site
For a Powerpoint viewer (ppt) and Media player (mov) go to the Microsoft download area
For a Quicktime player go to the Apple website
We have tried to make this site as easy to use as possible - but if you’re having difficulties, the pointers below should help.
1 - all of the resources appear on this site as entries, with a coloured bar at the top, a picture, some text and a link to files or website pages etc.
2 - to view an entry, you need to click on the coloured bar with the drop arrow, the entry will expand to show text, picture, files and links. Sometimes you might need to scroll the page to see it properly. There is also another option to rate the file - when you click this, the entry appears on it’s own page.
3 - to download files, you have to click on the links with the name of the resource on, eg Matia_story.pdf and then wait for it to download to your computer - the time this takes will depend on the speed of connection you have. Some of the files may be blocked by your computer (like .exe files), in which case, a bar might appear below your address bar that asks you if you want to download the file, if you trust us, click ‘yes’. You may not have the correct software to view some files, such as Google Earth files, Flash files and you may also not have Adobe Reader for pdfs. The software for these files is standard and free, so if you need any of these, scroll to the base of this page to download them from the companies that make them.
4 - to find a resource, you can either use the menus on the left, the search boxes on the right, the categories link found in each entry or the tags also included in entries. Simply click on the menu title, such as ‘African gardens’ to view all the entries, or use the drop arrow to the right of each menu heading to choose from the sub-categories. So, for ‘African gardens’, you may click on the arrow and see that you can choose ‘Bag gardens’, ‘Keyhole gardens’ and other categories of entries. This may save you a bit of time. The search boxes give the option of a speedy Live search, that updates as you type, or the Advanced search, which will come in more useful as the Cowfiles site grows. Once you’ve expanded an entry, you can view which other categories may have similar entries in, such as ‘food’ and click this, or see what tags are linked to the entry, like ‘practical’.
If you see any other glitches, please email us using the contact page.
