Colophon - How the Site is Constructed

Aircrew Remembered is published by Kelvin Youngs who is based in Norfolk, England. Senior Editors are Roy Wilcock and Ralph Snape, who worked closely with the late Traugott Vitz on War Crimes material as well as managing our very busy Helpdesk.

Content is being dynamically added on a continuous basis. Important contributions are made by Tom Kracker in the USA, Captain François Dutil (RCAF retired), Major Fred Paradie (RCAF) and Colin Bamford in Canada and Paul McGuiness in Australia. Jack Albrecht leads a specialist team in Canada addressing the missions of 625 Squadron. A team of specialist editors in England, Germany, Holland, Belgium, France and Poland contributes important content. We have strong ties to researchers in New Zealand.

Kelvin Youngs laying the Wreath to Alec Pietrzak's 309 Squadron, Polish War Memorial, Northolt, September 2014
Photo © 2014 Frances Gates, used with permission

Font

The main site font is Candara. Since this is not a standard system font for many users, we use automatic font downloading for those who do not have the font installed on their system. Arial is the secondary font, automatically substituted whenever Candara font definitions are unavailable for any reason.

In order to maximize user performance, images are generally rendered at the lowest resolution that still provides good visual quality. We utilize custom-written software to perform automatic resolution reduction. Images are generally .jpg which delivers minimal file size for a given image quality but .png is used on occasions. Users can request higher resolution versions from our custom-designed Imaging Archive.

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative

Because of the high level of interaction between ourselves and Archives and Libraries worldwide, standarisation of terms and methods of describing data are more important, and to this end we support and are part of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, or DCMI, which is an open organization supporting innovation in metadata design and best practices across the metadata ecology. DCMI's activities include work on architecture and modeling, discussions and collaborative work in DCMI Communities and DCMI Task Groups, global conferences, meetings and workshops, and educational efforts to promote widespread acceptance of metadata standards and best practices.

DCMI maintains a number of formal and informal liaisons and relationships with standards bodies and other metadata organizations.

Content Preparation

Content is provided by contributors from many locations worldwide and in order to preserve consistency, we provide templates via a custom-written interface. Templates are supported for Apple OSX, iOS and Windows. In some cases, content is hand-coded directly in HTML.

Database Technology

Most database content is held in custom-designed MySQL databases. Custom-written functions support creation, search and database maintenance using PHP.

Extensive use is made of custom-written and third-party JavaScript. JavaScript frameworks are used, including JQuery. Other than on the homepage, no graceful fallback is provided for users who have turned off JavaScript and those functions will not operate for users who make this choice, including Facebook and Twitter interactions and highlighting.

Research Tools

Our team makes extensive use of their own libraries related to aviation, and in addition are paid-up members of various National Archives across the world and other research groups. We support our efforts with a research tool based on a system designed for professional and academic researchers, and customised by us. Using this, each team members can share his/her research resources and results with the entire Aircrew Remembered team, greatly enhancing each individual.

Technical Support and Content Validation

Technical support is provided by Stefan Pietrzak Youngs B.Sc. and Richard Aras B.Sc. and database specialists based in Europe. Hosting support is provided by a team in the UK. Content creation by our contributing editors is made on the current releases of OSX Safari and iOS Safari, and on Windows Firefox, and Chrome. Prior to deployment, testing of templates they use is conducted on Apple Macintosh using OSX Safari and iOS Safari, plus Firefox and Chrome, whilst testing on Windows is performed using Firefox and Chrome.

We don't have the resources to specifically test the site on Android devices owing to the large number of incompatible variants out in the wild, but our content is tested on Mac and Windows Chrome which Google says ensures validity on Android Chrome browsers.

Video

Video playback of all videos held on our servers is HTML 5. However, videos from external sources (for example YouTube) may use other encodings, and here playback will be determined by your browser and what the hosting server provides. For example, YouTube will automatically serve HTML 5 to iOS devices. Our policy is to host videos on our own Rumble channel, rather than depend on YouTube: this ensures that if content disappears from YouTube we have retained our own copies.

Privacy

In order to preserve user privacy, no user tracking technologies are employed. You can see our Privacy policy here.

Site Design

Site design is performed by Stefan Pietrzak Youngs on Apple Macintosh systems using validated HTML/CSS and is tested on current-generation OSX, current-generation iOS (iPad and iPhone) and current-generation Windows systems prior to publication. Our design process uses Pixelmator, Font Book, custom-written and modified JavaScript, various text editors, custom-written OSX automation routines and custom-written CSS and native html. Primary browser used for development is Apple OSX Safari.

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