What is in the Great War exhibition?	Top of page

This exhibition is intended for students of the History National Curriculum at Key Stage 3-4. It features original papers, letters, photos, maps and other material from the National Archives.

For more information on the content, scope and themes of the exhibition, please see the Teacher's notes.

Recommended specifications and plugins	Top of page

For best viewing of this exhibition we recommend:

• 800 x 600 (minimum screen resolution)
• 16-bit colour monitor (or higher)
• Style sheets, automatically load images and JavaScript to be enabled
• 16-bit stereo soundcard (or better)
• Internet Explorer 4.5+ or Netscape 4.7+ or Opera 6.0+
• Adobe Acrobat reader 5.0 (or higher)
• Windows Media player 6.4 (or higher)
• Macromedia Flash player 6.0 (or higher)

To access our worksheets, presentations and films, you may need the following:

• A word processing package that can read rtf files (e.g. Microsoft Word). If you don't have MS Word, you could use Word viewer, which is available free for PC, or Appleworks for Mac OS X.
• Windows Media Player. Download Windows Media Player (free): PC or Mac
• Macromedia Flash 6.0 player. Download the latest Flash plugin (free): PC or Mac
• Adobe Reader to view PDF documents. Get the latest Adobe Reader plugin (free): PC or Mac

Finding your way around	Top of page

Site Map: At the foot of each page there is a link to a site map that will show you the main sections of this exhibition.

Getting back to where you started: Near the top of each page there is a breadcrumb trail (e.g. Home > Trench experience > An allied army) that shows you where you are and how to retrace your steps through the exhibition. To go back to other exhibitions in the Learning Curve, use the breadcrumb trail at the very top of the page (e.g. The National Archives > Exhibitions & Learning Online > Learning Curve > Exhibitions > Great War).

Contact us: If you have questions for us, choose the link to 'Contact us' from the foot of any page.

Film sources	Top of page

To speed up download times and allow for the best viewing of each film clip in this exhibition, please choose the format that best matches your type of Internet connection. There is a trade-off, so the larger the film file, the slower the download, but the better the viewing quality. The table below is a rough estimate of the download times for the clips:

If you cannot view the films, try updating to the latest version of Windows Media Player. On each film page there is a link to where you can download the plugin you need.

Audio sources	Top of page

Sound files are provided for some sources and use the Flash plugin. If you cannot hear the files, try downloading the latest version of the plugin.

Sources with zoom	Top of page

On detailed or large sources, there is a zoom function so you can have a closer look. If you cannot see the source, try downloading the latest version of the Flash plugin.

The toolbar at the bottom of the screen has controls for moving around the source and for zooming in and out. You can also use keys to move around: A to zoom in, Z to zoom out and the arrow keys to move around.

Changing the font size	Top of page

If you have difficulty reading the text on web pages, you can change the font size to make it easier to read.

Printing and PDF pages	Top of page

Most pages of the Great War exhibition have a "Print" button at the top right. For supporting pages (like transcripts, useful notes, help, glossary, etc.) this will just print the web page. For main pages (like the case studies and source pages) this will print a page specially designed to print the source images at a better quality.

When printing a HTML web page (excluding PDF documents) from a web browser, it is recommended to enable the print background colours and images. To enable this option on IE6.0, tick the checkbox from Tools, Internet Options, Advance tab. To enable this option on NS7.0, tick the checkbox from File, Page setup, Format and options tab.

These specially designed pages are in PDF format. Some PDFs are quite large (over 1 MB) and so may be slow to open. If you chose to print a whole case study rather than just one source page, this will be a very large PDF. You will need the Adobe Reader to open and print them. If you don't have it, get Adobe Reader from: Adobe.

Anyone with a visual impairment who is unable to use PDF documents should find out about the added accessibility features in Adobe Reader. These include a ‘read out loud’ option, which uses speech software to read the text through the computer speakers. For more information, visit: accessibility in Adobe Reader.