Using the viHistory Site
The viHistory site has several sections, including Census, Directory and Tax Assessment records; documents such as municipal bylaws; and a variety of related maps. Each section has its own help page or pages. This page is an introduction to the overall workings of the site.
Links
Most pages on this site have links to other pages on this site or on other sites. When text is a link it will be blue like this, and you can click anywhere on the blue text to go to the linked page. There are several icons used here that are also links. In some cases pictures and other images are links as well; usually clicking one of these will show you a larger version of the image. If you have followed one more links and want to return to the page where you started, just click your browser's "Back" button.
Navigation Menu Bar
At the top of every page is a navigation bar. Each of the words in the menu bar is a link to one of the main sections of the site. Clicking one of the words will take you to the main page for that section, where you will find additional information and links to related pages. The sections are:
- Search
- The viHistory site has several search pages. Clicking on the Search link will take you to a page that lists all of the available searches, and provides links to the search pages.
- Census
- This link will take you to the main page for the Census records section of the site. From there you can link to a variety of information about the census data available here.
- Directories
- This link will take you to the main page for the Directory records section of the site. From there you can link to a variety of information about the business directory and street index data available here.
- Properties
- This link will take you to the main page for the Tax Assessment Roll records section of the site. From there you can link to a variety of information about property records for Victoria and Nanaimo.
- Documents
- This link will take you to the main page for the Documents section of the site. From there you can link to a variety of historical documents relating to Vancouver Island, including biographies and business profiles; population data; and municipal bylaws.
- Maps
- This link will take you to the main page for the Maps section of the site. From there you can link to several maps of Vancouver Island, Victoria and Nanaimo produced during the periods covered by the Census, Directory and Tax Assessment data found here.
- Links
- This link will take you to the a page of links to other sites that provide information on Vancouver Island history.
- About
- This link will take you to a page that provides a general overview of the viHistory site, plus other information about the site and its creators.
- Help
- This link will take you to the main help page.
The "Breadcrumb" Trail
Below the menu bar on every page is a set of links that look like this:
This is known as a "breadcrumb trail"; it shows the path to the page you are viewing, as though you had dropped "breadcrumbs" as you "walked" the path to get there. Each section of the trail is a link that will take you to the page that this one logically follows. This is not the same as the browser history, which keeps track of each page you visit, and lets you back up (using the browser "Back" button or history list) to view the pages you previously visited, in reverse order. The breadcrumb trail shows you how the pages are logically linked, not the order in which you visited them. In the example above, taken from the Summary of Census Enumerators' Instructions, 1881 page, the logical "previous" page is the Census 1881 main page; the page before that is the Census main page, and before that the site Home page. The links therefore show you the path back to more general information on the census data.
Browser Compatibility
We've tried to make our site accessible to all modern web browsers while taking advantage of newer technologies, such as XHTML, XML, JavaScript, and CSS-2. The site is fully XHTML 1.1 and CSS Level 2 compliant. It has been tested with Firefox, Mozilla, Opera and Internet Explorer on Windows, and Firefox and Safari on the Macintosh. Only the more recent versions of these browsers were tested. There are some differences in the display of the pages with the different browsers; Firefox, being standards compliant, is recommended. Some pages link to Portable Document Format (PDF) files, which you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader to view.
