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What is in the Heroes & Villains exhibition?

This exhibition is intended for students of the History National Curriculum at Key Stage 3-5. It features original papers, letters, photos, maps and other material from the National Archives.

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Recommended specifications and plugins

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 6.0+ or Netscape 6.0+ or Mozilla Firefox 1.0+
• 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

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Finding your way around

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 > Churchill & Dresden > Why target Dresden?) 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 > Research, education & online exhibitions > Learning Curve > Exhibitions > Heroes & Villains).

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

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Film sources

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: modem or broadband. The broadband file is larger, so will be slower to download, but will be of better viewing quality.

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.

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Audio sources

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.

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Sources with zoom

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.

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Changing the font size

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

Internet Explorer: Go to the 'View' menu and select 'Text size'. Then choose the font size, from 'smallest' to 'largest', which suits you best.

Netscape Communicator: Go to the 'View' menu and select either 'Increase font' or 'Decrease font' as required.

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Printing and PDF pages

Most pages have a "Print" button at the top right.

For main pages (like the source pages) this will print a page specially designed to print the images at a better quality. These pages are in PDF format. Some PDFs are quite large and so may be slow to open. If you chose to print a whole section 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.

For supporting pages (like transcripts), the "Print" button will just print the web page. When printing a web page from a web browser, we recommend you enable the print background colours and images.

• For Internet Explorer, choose Tools, then Internet Options, then the Advanced tab. Check the tick box under the "Printing" header to allow the printing of background colours and images.
• For Netscape, choose File, then Page Setup, then Format and then the Options tab. Check the tick box to allow the printing of background colours and images.
• For Firefox, choose File, then Page Setup, then Format and Options tab. Check the tick box to allow the printing of background (colours and images).

Web users using Internet Explorer 6.x on Windows XP (service pack 2) may have problems with the print feature. If this is the case, then please use the keyboard print command: <ctrl> + <p>.