Welcome to the Osborne Origins HELP and FAQ page. This page provides some explanation for the operation of the Osborne Origins website and provides a list of Frequently Asked Questions and answers that hopefully will help you understand any problems you are having finding information on the website.
The first thing you should be aware of is that unlike 99% of other websites, Osborne Origins runs uses multiple browser windows. For reasons that will become clear later, this will actually help you find information on the website more quickly and in a more useful manner, but at first can certainly cause some confusion if you are not already familiar with websites that use multiple windows.
There is additional cross-linking in these two categories that can help you do additional research based on what you already have in the Source Records and Family Records windows. For instance, at the bottom of each family group, there is a list of notes which gives source information on where the data shown in the family group comes from. Many of these notes are links -- clicking on the link brings up the actual source information, but in the Source Records window. This allows you compare the information provided in the family group, with what that source record contains.
Likewise, if you are browsing through census records and find a person in the records with a note of the form "[#1234]", that can be a link family group information. Clicking on the link in the census records brings up the family group in the Family Records window. You can then compare the census record with the information contained in the family group.
The second thing to do is to not run your browser windows "full screen". You should always see a little bit of your computer monitor's "desk top" and be able to move your browser windows by "grabbing" the bar at the top of the browser windows. If you can't move the window, you are probably running full screen. You can switch back and forth between full screen and not full screen by clicking on the middle button of the three small buttons in the upper right hand corner of the browser window. Once you know your window is not full screen, if necessary, shrink your browser window by "grabbing" the ride hand edge and pulling it left. Likewise, shorten the browser window by grabbing at the bottom edge and pulling up. Hopefully, this exposes more of your desktop, allowing you to see more of other browser windows.
The third thing to do is to be aware that when your browser opens a new window for the first time, it is very likely to put the new window exactly on top of the previous window. When this happens, the "Back" browser button will be "faint" and will not do anything. Partially expose the previous window by grabbing the bar at the top of the new window and moving it a bit.
The last thing to do is to remember that each window has an "icon" in the toolbar at the bottom of your computer screen. You can click on each and every one of these icons until you find the window you want. If clicking on an icon doesn't seem to do anything, then click on it a second time and that window will be brought to the "top" of all of the windows.
Good hunting for your relatives!