Using this site

How do I choose a story?

A random selection of stories:

First choose STORIES from the menu. You will see sixteen pictures on the screen. Move the mouse pointer over each picture and the screen will change to show you information about that story. Click on the picture and the story will start to play.

The pictures are a random selection from the available stories. There is a link that enables you to see a new selection.

When you know the name of the author:

If you know the name of the person who made the story you want to see, choose STORIES from the menu, then choose MAKER. The screen will show a list of everyone who’s made a story on the site, in alphabetical order of first names, so Alison Wells is listed before Tim Ewin. It also will show the titles of all the stories they have made. Use the scrollbar to look at names later in the list. Move the mouse pointer over the title of the story and the screen will change to show you information about it. Click on the title to play the story.

When you know the name of the story you want to see:

Choose STORIES from the menu, then choose TITLE from the menu. The screen will show a list of all the stories on the site, listed in alphabetical order. Use the scrollbar to look at titles later in the list. Move the mouse pointer over the title of the story and the screen will change to show you information about it. Click on the title to play the story.

When you want to see a story about a particular area

There are two ways to do this: i) You can use the search page and search for the area name or ii) you can use the area page. Note that some stories may be set in a particular area, but not mention that area, so the search and area pages may come up with different lists of stories.

More about playing the stories / using the site

If the stories are working, your computer already has the right software installed. Experiment with playing the different story sizes; if you have a fast internet connection, you will be able to play the biggest size of story. Click on “transcription” to read the script of the story.

Getting the stories to play

The stories need Apple’s free QuickTime Player. If the stories won’t play on your computer, try going to the QuickTime site and installing QuickTime. Check the system requirements on the site: users of older computer systems will need to use one of the following – QuickTime 5.05 (Windows 95), QuickTime 6.4 (Windows 98/NT/Me), QuickTime 6.0.3 (Apple Mac OS X 10.2 and earlier and OS 8.6–9.x). Unfortunately the right version of QuickTime is unavailable for older computer systems.

More about the QuickTime plug-in:

QuickTime is a small, additional (and free) bit of software for your browser which will enable you to watch the films on this and many other websites.

You may even already have it without knowing it. It's a quick and easy process to check and add the plug-in. Check your web browser for QuickTime.

Other problems with the site:

If QuickTime is installed and you are still having trouble, you may be using an old browser: Bristol Stories uses features found on most mainstream browsers from about 1998 onwards (eg Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 and later). It has been tested on Windows and Apple computers with most popular modern browsers.

The text is too small

Most browsers allow you to enlarge/reduce the text size. The option is often in a “View” menu, under “Text Size” or similar.

More about searching for stories:

The search function can help you find stories that mention a particular thing, place, experience or activity.

The Search Box

Type a word or words that you want to search for. The search will look through the title, subject, description and script of all the stories and list matching stories on the right. If no stories match, none will be shown.

Note: searching for “cat” will also find words like “cathedral” and “unscathed”. “Cat purr” will narrow the search down.

The Theme Box

To find all stories matching a particular theme, leave the search box empty. Most stories cover several themes. You can use theme and search at the same down to perform a more specific search.

If you get no results, try using different or less search words, or choosing “All themes”.

Bristol Stories RSS feed

With RSS, you can find out about new stories and events without having to keep going to the web site. First you’ll need to install an RSS reader and then subscribe to the Bristol Stories news feed. Different readers work in different ways: some allow you to search the page for RSS feeds, other required you to add a feed and paste in the address of the feed. The address of the Bristol Stories feed is
http://www.bristolstories.org/rss/bs_rss.xml