Free Birth certificate online U.K.?

[Kleftiwallah]

I cannot remember Jimmy! I just saw it before I shut down Free B.M.D. and just wondered what it meant!

Cheers, Tony.

[peterd]

its the page for the index which will have his name on it and the refrence number you can view it in different formats.

click the glasses symbol
scroll down the page (it will be on the left hand side half way down.)
click view the original,
index page should be viewable

[Kleftiwallah]

Hello peterd long time no hear,

I've noticed the screen changes and asks me which format to open the page, gives me about five options all of which I do not understand, I just keep my fingers crossed it will open when I click on the glasses!

Cheers, Tony.

[SRD]

Sometimes there is more than one image available and sometimes those images are in different formats. The suffix (the letters after the .) will tell you what format it is. Most ordinary viewing software will open most formats but the quality can vary.

If you want to be able to save the info as actual text (so it can be formatted, edited etc.) rather than a picture of the text the .tif option is better as OCR (Optical Character Recognition software that converts an image into text) generally works with that format.

The most common image type is .jpg and is good enough for most uses.

.gif can produce smaller files so is better for websites. It also has the ability to easily produce transparent areas of an image so that the background shows through. Again useful for websites or if you are making animations.

I should say that these are generalisations and that there are many more specialised formats.

As far as looking at the images on FreeBMD is concerned try each one and see which one gives the clearest definition of the entry for your requirements. If you find that using the 'original' form won't open on your computer try one of the others from the list on the right hand side. Clicking on the 'Which format to choose?' link gives more info on the various ways you can look at/save the pictures.

But you won't get to see the certificates that way, FreeBMD only has images of the index which will give you the data required to order a certificate.

As far as

ANC-05/1899M4-NO-0257.jpg
LDS-211-000-0951472/1899m4-257.tif

is concerned
This shows that the first image used to transcribe the entry came from Ancestry (ANC) and the second from the Mormons (LDS - Latter Day Saints). The rest is the filing code of the pictures from those organisations.