This site is optimized for 800 x 600 resolution or greater. Some pages may not display correctly at a lower resolution

 

	Microsoft Internet Explorer 5..5 or 6.0x  Internet Explorer (IE) is Microsoft's Internet browser that has been incorporated into the latest versions of their Windows Operating System (Windows 98, 98 SE, Millennium, and Windows 2000, Windows XP).  Because of the differences between browsers and inconsistencies of rendering the web pages, we have decided to develop the Florence County EMS Website to work best with Internet Explorer version 5.0 or higher. This should also be compatible with most recent versions of America Online. If you don't have the newest version of IE, click on the logo to download the latest version from Microsoft, free of charge. If you are using AOL, do not upgrade, as this will cause problems. Only upgrade to official AOL versions! Netscape Navigator 4.0 and later can also be used, though it might display pages somewhat differently. Firefox and Mozilla work fine, although there is a slight rendering error on a few of the main entry page graphics placeholders.
	JavaScript This is a scripting language that is used to make web pages more dynamic and interactive. JavaScript is a direct descendent of Java. In the mid 1990's, Java was becoming the latest and greatest programming technology. The designers of Netscape Navigator saw Java's trend and the potential of incorporating this new technology as a part of its browser. This would enhancing the abilities of web pages and, in turn, the whole Internet experience. Netscape teamed up with Sun Microsystems, Inc. to create an easy to learn programming language based on Java and its concept of a "Virtual Machine." The Java "Virtual Machine" is a piece of software that runs Java code as if it were a computer by itself. This makes the code portable to any type of computer, as long as it has a version of the "Virtual Machine." JavaScript extends the ability of web pages to display text, play sounds, recognize mouse clicks, and the ability to write programmer defined functions. The JavaScript syntax is based on Java's syntax, but very loosely. We use JavaScript on the Florence County EMS Website to calculate dates and recognize what brand and version of browser you are using. This helps us to provide a more user-friendly and interactive web site. If you are getting errors that cause a box to pop up and say "Run-time Error. Do you wish to Debug" there is probably an error in the Javascript on that page.
	HTML 4.0 This is the latest version of the Hyper-Text Markup Language specification as described by the World Wide Web Consortium. HTML is the "publishing" language of the World Wide Web. It is the language used to write and display a web page's content. The World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, guides the standardization of web technologies to see that the web is used to its fullest potential.
	Micrografx Picture Publisher This is the award winning image editing software released by Micrografx. We use this software for all of the image authoring, modification, and creation of all of the various images displayed on this site. It is a very powerful graphical tool allowing precision editing of photographs and digital formats. We also use it to prepare individual sections for animated gifs. We are experimenting with The GIMP, which is open source, and runs on multiple platforms.
This site is maintained with  Microsoft Frontpage 2000.
The Star of Life background on the secondary pages was created by taking a regular Star of Life picture that I drew by hand on the computer several years ago, then copying it. The copy was split into two pieces vertically. The complete Star of Life was then copied, along with the other two pieces, onto a new picture. The complete Star of Life was placed on top, with the split pieces being swapped from their sides to the other, below. This was then pasted all together into one picture. The reason for this, is that the half pieces combine together with the next piece over,  when the background tiles to cover the page, so that you just don't have row after row of Star of Life's. Since the Star of Life is bright blue, using it as a background as it was, would take the focus off the page contents too much. We wanted to just have a suggestion of the Star of Life, without it overpowering the foreground. To keep this from happening, it was copied over onto a white background, with the copy being set to about 90% transparency. This causes the faded look. You will have to experiment with your particular graphic program to get the same effect, depending on the Star of Life you use.
The 'Florence County Emergency Medical Services' header was made in Corel Presentations, as a 3d text object with an offset shadow. It was then moved to a paint program, and slightly blurred, which smoothed it out somewhat, and gave it the appearance of rounded letters. It was then masked, and saved as a transparent gif so the background could show through.
The Florence County seal was copied over from the artwork on the Florence County site. It was scanned and reworked by Wesley Neville of the Florence County Sheriffs Office, who is doing the work for the Florence County site. It was masked and saved as a transparent gif so that the background could flow up to the patch, instead of being in a square box of color.
The Florence County EMS patch was scanned in and cleaned up in a paint program. It was masked and saved as a transparent gif.
The South Carolina state Emergency Medical Technician, Emergency Medical Technician - Intermediate, and Paramedic patches were scanned in from real patches and cleaned up in a paint program. They were saved as transparent gifs, so that they would not have a block shape, but rather that the background could flow directly up to the sides of the patch, like the county seal and EMS patch did.
Photos on this site were obtained from various in-house sources. Most of the pictures on the gallery portion prior to 1998 were taken directly from video tape provided by the local TV affiliates. Some on-scene footage was obtained in real time by the Shift Supervisors's use of a Sony 8mm video camera. Transfer was into the computer for processing via Snappy, from Play, inc.(currently closed) or through the WinTV PCI card, from Hauppage. The pictures were taken at 800 x 600 resolution, and then sampled down to the size needed for the pages here. We are currently utilizing a Kodak DC4800 digital camera, with a maximum resolution of 2160 x 1440.

A portion of the text in the upper tables was adapted from the Maple Avenue Fire Departments Homepage