What do I need to view this site?

The main answer to that is simple: a good web-browser

A web-browser is the program you are using now to view this webpage. There are a number of common web-browsers, and some are definitely better than others. The most common ones are:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer : This used to be the most common one with nearly 100% of people using it at one time. Unfortunately Microsoft became complacent and have only recently decide to update it. As a result, Internet Explorer version 6.0 and earlier is now very outdated, with poor support for modern web standards. Even so, about 80% of people surfing the internet still use it! Many users will currently be using version 6, as shipped with Windows XP. If it is not configured correctly (in common with other browsers), it can leave users vulnerable to unwanted software being downloaded onto their computer. Also, because of its widespread use and poor security, it is commonly targeted by hackers as a route to placing malicious software onto computers. See this page at Microsoft for improving safety. For safer browsing, Microsoft now recommend that users download version 7 of this browser and it is shipped by default with Vista. See the Microsoft Internet Explorer website for more details. Version 7.0 may be installed in the future as an automatic upgrade to Windows XP by the Windows software updater. I would strongly advise people to upgrade to this new version of Internet Explorer as soon as possible. It is a much better browser, although again Microsoft haven't implemented all the new web standards and so I would still recommend that people try Firefox or Opera instead. There are rumours that Microsoft is already working on Internet Explorer version 8 and we look forward to seeing that.
• Firefox : This is a newer browser that has been taking most of the market share from Internet Explorer. It is free, will run on Windows, Linux and Apple computers, has good support for all the latest web standards, is easy to use and great for browsing. It is considered to be safe and is well maintained. It is our most recommended browser. It is also the one that we use for testing. There are help pages on this website which show you how to configure the Firefox browser for safe surfing.
• Opera : This is a well established commercial, but free, web-browser. It will also run on most computers (including web tablets and mobile phones) and it, too, is gaining market share. It has a clean interface, supports the latest web standards and is easy to use. The latest version 9 is very fast, stable and has some very nice extras. We recommend it and support version 9 fully. You can get it from opera.com
• Safari : This is the web-browser for the Apple Mac. It has a good reputation, but we don't run it here so can't vouch for it. We can't test our website on it and would welcome reports (and fixes!) from people who do.
• Konqueror : Based on software common with Safari, this is a Linux web-browser. It appears stable and fast with good support for standards and we will be testing compatibility in the future.

If you know of any other web-browsers, then please let us know and tell us how the website looks.

We recommend a screen size of at least 1024x768 for browsing.

Plug-ins required

A plug-in is software that you download from a website that allows your web-browser to do new things.

Adobe Flash plug-in

Some games on this web-site require the Flash plug-in from Adobe. Most computers have this installed or your browser will ask if you want to install it when it is first needed.

If you have to install it manually, go to http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer and download the free player.

The Flash games on this site will work with version 7 or greater. Most recent downloads will be for version 8 or 9 of the player.

Version 9 of the Flash player is now also available on Linux. You may want to check out the GNU Gnash project at http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash which is developing an open source alternative. This also applies if you are wary of proprietary formats and want an open source solution.

SVG plug-in

SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphics. Unlike normal images on a website, "vector" graphics represent pictures as lines, circles, etc. and not as a series of little dots ("pixels"). This has the advantage that you can make SVG pictures bigger or smaller and they will still be just as detailed. If you try to make an image bigger it will just look more blocky. If you try to make an image smaller then it will look fuzzy.

Modern web browsers such as Firefox 1.5 and above, and Opera 9 are able to draw SVG pictures on a web page. Older and non-conformant browsers such as Internet Explorer cannot, but Adobe has produced a plugin that will enable you to be able to. You can download it from the Adobe website (just click this link).

Puzzle Pixies uses SVG for colouring-in pages and pages for printing out, so that they will look great when printed out on a printer.