There has been a lively correspondence about this on GenesReunited, which is where I found the first reference to freeBMD images.
Some people seem to have no problems at all, others have one or more of the above mentioned, and/or other problems. I personally have had absolutely no problems, right from the off - maybe it's the browser settings, plug-ins, I don't know.
For those less fortunate, I am including three peoples' postings here, in the hopes that others will profit from them:
Posting 1:
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It seems that some of the pages (mainly newer ones) are .tiff files....when I do the last selection on the pages to select...I get the option to save or open the file...I can . to file and view it later..
But.....
With some of the earlier stuff, the files are .gif files.....my browser tries to open these directly...and probably because they are quite large, I don't see much..apart from a bit of the image in the left hand side of my browser....
So if you then click on this part of the image, and then do a right click with your mouse...you get a menu which allows you to do a "Save picture as" ...you can then . to your pc....I did this as a bitmap (.bmp) file...which you can then view using "Paint" or another application like that...
Hope you understand all that...but it does work if you
Posting 2:
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If your computer is using QuickTime to open TIF files, then you won't have the option to zoom into the image, print or save the image. If you'd like to zoom into the image, print and save the image, then follow these instructions...
1. Close your Internet browser.
2. Make sure you have the latest QuickTime Player installed on your computer.
To do this, click Start Menu > Programs > QuickTime > QuickTime Updater. The software will update itself. If QuickTime is already up-to-date, a dialogue box appears saying its up-to-date and you click the Quit button.
3. Double-click the icon for QuickTime Player. If you don't have this icon, click Start Menu > Programs > QuickTime > QuickTime Player.
4. Click the Edit menu, Preferences, QuickTime Preferences.
5. From the drop-down menu, select "Brower plug-in" and click the MIME Settings button.
6. Click the "+" sign to the left of "Images - Still image files". Look for the option "TIFF image file" and remove the tick in the box. Click the Apply button and OK button. Close QuickTime Settings and close QuickTime Player.
7. Open your Internet browser and type in the web address for FreeBMD. When you select the image you want to download, a dialogue box may appear with the options: Open, Save, Cancel and More Info.
Click the "Open" button and wait a couple of seconds for the image to open. When the image does open, you will notice a toolbar with a zoom in/out button and options to save and print.
Posting 3:
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Each image is going to be anything from 128KB to 756KB in size depending upon which type of file format has been used and how it was scanned. The majority of later-dated files are TIFF files and earlier ones were GIF. So if you have dial-up modem access expect it to take some time to download.
I'm not sure what problems people are having but the sequence is to select the option and click SUBMIT query repeating as further options appear. You may well see a "?" at some stage particularly where you would expect a list of letters indicating surname starting letter(s). If so, select it and still continue. Finally you will come to a list of files starting with the year, a letter signifying the type of record (b=birth etc), a number indicating the quarter and finally a sequential number. You can only process one image page at a time so you will have to guess where your person is if the list is unsorted (that is where ? was shown).
Then you should be asked whether you want to open or save the file. The obvious one is to save for later. This has nothing to do with internet explorer security settings and will not block the question even if you have a firewall running. Whether you open directly or from a saved file, then you should use a suitable viewing package. The best and free one is IRFANView which will open up all the indicated file types. In that software you can rotate images, zoom in/out, print etc.
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Good Luck, everybody,
Bob
