Site Navigation Help

From any page on our website, you may position your mouse's pointer above our logo in the top left-hand corner, then click to return to our home page.

Zoom in on a web page

From the keyboard you can increase or decrease the zoom value in 10% increments. To zoom in, press [Ctrl] and [ + ] keys. To zoom out, press [Ctrl] and [ - ] keys. To restore the zoom to 100%, press [Ctrl] and [ 0 ].

If you are using a mouse with a centre wheel, you can zoom in and out by holding down the [Ctrl] key on your keyboard while revolving your mouse's centre wheel.

Navigation in general

Using the scroll bars

Scrolling within a web page may be achieved by using the vertical scroll bar positioned on the right border of the browser window or the horizontal scroll bar (if visible) on the bottom border of the browser window. You can click and hold your mouse's left button on the scroll button to drag it in both directions or you can click its pointer somewhere else in the scroll bar to scroll portions at a time.

Using the backwards and forwards arrows

Clicking your mouse's pointer on the left or right arrow buttons at the top left corner of the browser will allow you to move backwards or forwards through the selection of web pages that you have visited.

Using your keyboard's navigation keys

The navigation keys [Home] [End] [Page Up] [Page Down] can be used to go to the top of the page, go to the bottom of the page, jump up one screen at a time, jump down one screen at a time. The four arrow keys allow you to scroll the page up, down left or right.

Navigation within our website

Search

A searchbox is located at the top right hand corner on every page of our website. If you type a word or phrase in the text window then use the left button of your mouse to click on the Search button, you will be provided with a list of documents on our site that contain that word or phrase. The search results page will also offer you a chance to conduct more refined searches if necessary. Once you select an item from the list by clicking on its title, you may subsequently find a word within the document by conducting a word or phrase search within that document. If your search led you to a web page, then you can got to the Edit menu of your browser window to select the Find (on This Page) command. If your search led you to a pdf document, then you can click on the binocular icon to conduct a word or phrase search.

Site map

Our site map should contain a link to every web page on our website. The page links are sorted in alphabetical order within major sections that are themselves sorted under our major departments.

Organisation chart

This diagram is a representation of Council's internal structure. You may click on any of the boxes to get to the home page of that entity.

The dropdown navigation menu

The dropdown menu, located under our page banner, is our main navigation method for directing you to the information you are seeking. The menu bar consists of a horizontal list of major topics. You may click on the menu titles to go to the relevant topic page. If you make your mouse's pointer hover over a title you will get a dropdown list of items pertaining to that topic. Some of the items have an arrow beside them that leads to a flyover menu of subitems. Clicking on any of the menu or item titles will take you to a web page on our site. The items under the Site Access menu give you with alternative methods of finding items. The Quick Links menu list contains what we believe are the most popular items on our site. Each of these items may also be listed elsewhere in the menu system.

The left side navigation menu

This menu gives you access to related topics. Many of the web pages on our site will contain this navigation menu positioned on the left of the page. This will contain a list of items that are related to the topic of the page you are visiting. The list is arranged in hierarchical order. The topmost menu button will lead you back to our site's home page. There may be one or more other home page buttons that lead you to subsidiary major topic pages. Below the last of these buttons will be the various buttons that lead to sub-topics.

Jump Menus

On the home page you see a menu bars with a down arrow and a [Go] button alongside. Simply click on the [Go] button to jump to the displayed item, or you can click on the down arrow to view a list of other items you may jump to by clicking on that item first.

Index / 'Back to top' buttons

Some of the longer documents will contain a page index at the top and 'Back to top' buttons within the page content. This is an aid to navigation within the document. Of course you may still use the scroll bars and back/forward arrows built into your browser window.

Buttons

You will find images of buttons in our web page banner and within the content of many of our web pages that, when pressed, will lead you to another web page indicated by its label. You can confirm that an image is a button by hovering your mouse's pointer over it. The pointer icon will change its form, usually to a hand icon. Our Council logo, located at the top left-hand corner of each page acts as a Home button which returns you to our Home page.

Links

Links on our website are strings of text that are highlighted in dark blue. Links behave in a similar way to buttons. When you move your mouse's pointer above a link, you will notice that the pointer will change its form - usually to a hand shape - and the text will become highlighted. When you click on the link it will take you to another web page, or an external website, or to a pdf document. You will be warned that you about to read a pdf document by an indication of its size in parentheses. Whenever you return to web pages that contained links that you have used previously, you will see that the text has changed colour from dark blue to a magenta.

Navigating within a pdf document

What is a pdf document?

PDF is an acronym for Portable Document Format. This format was developed by Adobe to allow computer users to view and print files created from a myriad of applications. Adobe offers a free program, Adobe Acrobat Reader, to view or print pdf documents. Click here to download and install the reader if you don't already have one installed.

In-built navigation

Once you open a pdf document, you can navigate within it by using the border scroll bars or keyboard navigation keys in much the same way described in "Navigation in general" section above. However, the bottom scroll bar allows you to use your mouse to click on arrows which cause you to jump to the beginning, jump to the previous page, jump to the next page or jump to the last page of the document. To jump to a particular page you can simply type the page number over the top of the one displayed in the page window.

Bookmarks tab

If the document was built with a table of contents, you can click on the Bookmarks tab positioned at the top left border to open a navigable table of contents. If you click on an item that interests you, you will be taken directly to the page that contains that item.

Pages tab

If you use your mouse's pointer to click on the pages tab positioned at the left border, you can then use the pointer to click again on any of the pages presented to you.

Binocular search

The most useful feature is accessible by clicking the "Search" binoculars icon positioned on the toolbar. In Acrobat Version 8 the binoculars icon is in the "Find" dropdown menu. You can find any occurrences of a particular word (or partial word) or phrase in the pdf document. You will be presented with a list of likely candidates in order of likelihood, whose items you may click with your mouse's pointer to jump to its location.

Closing a pdf document

If you move your mouse's pointer to click on the [X] button at the very top right-hand corner of your browser window, you may find that you have been also ejected from our site. If the back arrow (left-pointing) is active, then it is best to click on it to return to the last web page you had visited. Most times, however, the pdf document will have opened up in a separate browser window, so you can safely click on the [X] button to close the pdf document window.