Site Guide
The International Development Research Centre on the Web
The International Development Research Centre is a public corporation created
by the Parliament of Canada to help researchers and communities in
the developing world find solutions to their social, economic, and environmental
problems. IDRC's website is an important part of our effort to connect
people, institutions, and ideas to ensure that the results of the research
the Centre supports and the knowledge that research generates are shared
equitably among all its partners, North and South.
This page provides information about standard elements on all of IDRC's
pages such as icons and Directory
Line which make up the navigation bar. We have also
included information on the design philosophy behind
the site, and welcome your feedback.
Site Philosophy
The rapid growth of the Internet over the past five years has brought millions
of users worldwide to this new communications technology. But this development
has come at a price: increased technological requirements to access even
basic Internet functions. Most website designers create sites which can
only be accessed through the latest release of commercial WWW browsers
such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and use large
images, complex scripting, and other impediments to low-bandwidth users.
The mandate of the IDRC website is to provide a wealth of development research
and other information to everyone on the Internet, regardless of bandwidth
or browser. We have attempted to ease navigation for all users, especially
those visiting the site using low-bandwidth connections. No part of the
site depends on graphics for navigation. If you have turned graphics loading
off, or are using a text browser such as Lynx, you will see words in the
place of images. For instance, if you are visiting us in Lynx, instead
of the magnifying glass at the top of this page which signifies Find, you
will see the words Seach and Table of Contents.
As well, each page of the site is a standard 600 pixels wide. Layout will
be consistent across different monitor sizes and pages will print and display
consistently. The majority of pages avoid any sort of complex table layout,
making the processing of the page by your browser quicker whether you are
using a table-capable browser or not.
Recommended Browser Software
We have attempted to create a website which is accessible from a variety
of World Wide Web browsers. However, we believe some might be more useful
to you then others. Below are the World Wide Web browsers we recommend.
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Netscape Navigator Gold and
Communicator
are good cross-platform Web solutions, with browser, email, netnews,
and web authoring software bundled into one package. French
and English versions are available.
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Alis' Tango suite of Internet
tools provides multilingual browser, email, and web authoring software.
Tango's user interface can switch among nineteen languages, including French,
English, Spanish, German, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Thai, Arabic, and Hebrew.
A total of ninety languages are supported for display.
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Lynx is a text-only World
Wide Web browser which runs under Unix, VMS, and MS-DOS.
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Microsoft Internet Explorer
runs on Windows 95, Windows 3.1, and Mac OS platforms. It tends to have
smaller memory requirements than Netscape, is provided free, and is bundled
with a news and email client. English
and
French versions are available.
The Navigation Bar
Running across the top of each IDRC page is a navigation bar. This part
of the page will help you to find the information you are looking for,
get help, and more easily navigate the site.
In the upper right hand corner of the page are icons.
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Below these icons
is a line of text, called the Directory Line, which indicates the
path and catagories appropriate to the page you are currently visiting.
As you can see,
some of the words are links; if you click the word Resources in
the example above, you would be taken to the Resources section page. If
you select the word IDRC, then you will be taken to the IDRC home
page.
At the bottom
of the page is another navigation bar. This area provides instant access
to the main sections of the site: Resources, Research Programs, and The
Institution, as well as to IDRC's French home page.
Comments?
Questions?
Feel free to email
the website team at jstevenson@idrc.ca.
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