Frequently Asked Questions:

• NEW! The pdf issues displays/prints incorrectly in Firefox
• I cannot download/read any of the back issues/latest Chapbook's (pdf files) -- why? 
• I'm an Online Member but can't find the back issues/Chapbooks -- where are they?  
• I'm an Online Member and cannot login
• I'm an Online Member and forgot my username &/or password -- how do I get in?
• I'm an Online Member and get an error when trying to read one (or some) articles but I can read others -- help
• PDF files have checkered background
• I need help with PDF files
• Why is my password sent in plain text?

The issues pdf file displays/prints incorrectly in Firefox April 7, 2013
Firefox Version 19.x has a well known problem in displaying pdf's correctly -- see here for the gory details. This is NOT a problem with our pdf files. There are large bits of blue around some photos/graphics and printing can appear unclear when using this viewer.. Plus Firefox has disabled using Adobe Acrobat Reader now, so you can't see the issue correctly in Firefox now.. For now the best solution is to download the pdf file and view it in Acrobat Reader or some other pdf viewer, not in Firefox. You can download instead of viewing a pdf by right-clicking on the link and selecting "Save Link As". Then open it with your pdf viewing program, e.g. Adobe Acrobat. Hopefully the Firefox people will fix this problem quickly.

I cannot download/read any of the back issues/latest Chapbook's (PDF files) -- why?

First, you must be an Online Member before you can access these files You will need to enter your username (not your email address) and password -- you can retrieve those here if you can't remember. If you are not able to login, see some help here.

You will also need Adobe Acrobat Reader or equivalent to open and read all the PDF files. This is free software and you can install it from here. If you login successfully and still cannot read the issue (or part of it), the problem is most likely on your computer -- see below for your situation (Mac Safari users see the "Mac Users" section below)

If you already have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed, see if you can download other Acrobat files, e.g. here or other sites such as the US IRS site. If these work and you still can't download pdf files from our site, you might need to reinstall it to overcome the problems. Some other things to try include:

• Try clearing Temporary Internet Files (IE - Tool/Internet Options) or cache (Firefox -- Tools/Clear Recent History and then only select "Cache" ). Then try to retrieve the issue again.
• go to the Online Member's home page and clicking on the link for the issue or from the Back Issues page
• right-clicking on the link and selecting "Save Target As" or "Save Link As". This will try to download the file to your computer where you can then open the file with Acrobat Reader by double-clicking
• try it on another machine
• try it using another browser (Firefox, IE, Safari, ...)
• try it at a different location, e.g. home, work, friends, ...
• try reinstalling Acrobat Reader if nothing else works

Mac Users: We've recently had a number of readers complaining of problems when using Safari in reading PDF files. The cause is due to configuration problems between Acrobat and Safari on their machines, and not on our server. Doing a Google search for things like "Safari Acrobat problems" yields lots of complaints. Apparently if you are running Leopard, you should remove Acrobat if you have it installed -- Leopard has built-in support for pdf viewing. If the above suggestions do not cure you're problem, you can either right-click on the link to a pdf file and download the files for later viewing, or install some other browser, e.g. Firefox and use it for viewing our site -- the last solution apparently cures the problem for Mac users.

If you still cannot solve the issue, send all details of what you did and any messages you receive to the webmaster

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I'm an Online Member but can't find the back issues/Chapbooks -- where are they?

The best place to start is from the Online Members' Area. After you login, you will be on the Online Members' home page. From here, just follow the links and you can

• jump to the Travel Index, Equipment Index, Health and Safety Index, or the Miscellaneous Index. Here you will find hyperlinks to articles in our back issues as well as the thousands of reader reports in the Chapbooks.
  
• browse through our back issues, which are organized by month and year, with the articles listed as separate files.
• search for any word or phrase to find the articles or Chapbook reports of interest. Then just click on the link and you will be taken there.

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I am an Online Member and cannot login

Note that you must use your username (NOT your email address) and password that you chose when you signed up for membership. If you are a print subscriber and have not yet signed up for your free membership, you can sign up here; for others, you can join here. If you can't remember your username or password, see here

Occasionally a browser (IE, Firefox, Safari, ...) will not let you login no matter what you try -- it just says "not authorized" immediately and never gives you the chance to enter your username and password. This can happen if the browser has somehow gotten confused about your username/password. IN some browsers (Firefox) you can force the browser to erase its memory of these -- in Firefox, choose Tools/Clear Recent History and only check Active Logins. Otherwise you can fix this by clearing your temporary internet files/cache, shutting down the browser, and restarting. Occasionally a reboot of your machine may be required.

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I am an Online Member and forgot my username &/or password -- how do I get in?

We have an automated service that will email those to you. If you have problems (e.g. the email address you gave us no longer works), please contact us and we will get back with you shortly.

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I'm an Online Member and get an error when trying to read one (or some) articles but I can read others -- help?

Occasionally your browser, e.g. Internet Explorer, Netscape, AOL, will get a corrupted download of a file and insist on trying to display this, which can either generate error messages or appear scrambled. This is sally only a problem with PDF files. Even when you select the file again, the same thing happens. This can come about due to network difficulties as well as bugs in browser software.

If this happens to you, you need to clear your browser's cache (i.e. temporary storage of internet files) and perhaps restart your browser. In IE, go to "Tools", select "Internet Options", then the "General" tab, then "Delete Files" under "Temporary Internet Files"; in Netscape go to "Edit", then select "Preferences", choose "Cache" under "Advanced", then select "Clear Memory Cache" and "Clear Disk Cache". After this shut down your browser and restart it, and try again. The files should appear normally. If they don't, please contact me and give me full details of what happened and what you did to try to fix it.

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PDF files have a checkered background

Probably your setting in Adobe Acrobat is incorrect. Edit the preferences by right-clicking on the file and selecting "Page Display Preferences". Uncheck the box for "Show Transparency Grid". Then OK out of there. The checkered boxes should have disappeared.

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I need help with PDF files

For some basic information, click here. For help with using Acrobat in reading/accessing PDF files, click here.

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Why is my password sent in plain text?

Basically because it's a lot easier for our readers to deal with. Otherwise on things like lost passwords (a frequent occurrence), you would need to request a temporary password and then reset it. We strongly recommend that you do not use this password with other websites, especially any personal or sensitive ones.

This was a decision we made a long time ago and still agree with -- no one can get your financial info or make any charges on your credit card.  People generally find it much easier to deal with passwords that way.  Now if we had real financial access (e.g. like internet banking) or very personal info, we'd take a different approach and not put passwords in plain text. But we do recommend that you do NOT use the same username/password here as ones you would use on other, more personal sites.

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