Site Help

This site is designed to work on a number of platforms with a wide range of browsers. Easy access will be achieved with Netscape 7.0 or Internet Explorer 4 (or later) and browser updates from these companies are currently free.

Site design

This site is designed to work on a number of platforms with a wide range of browsers. Easy access will be achieved with Netscape 7.0 or Internet Explorer 4 (or later) and browser updates from these companies are currently free.

The pages are designed to optimise for display with a screen size of 1024 x 768 pixels, however the site can be viewed at lower resolutions down to 800x600 pixels.

We would recommend a 56 kbps dial-up or better for connection to the website.

Southampton online has five main areas:

• The header contains the Southampton online banner and the search box, as well as a number of links to improve the accessibility of the website including text only and access keys, speaking pages and translation facilities. There are also a number of tabs along the header to take you direct to information relevant to you, whether via the A-Z of services or to information and links specific to residents, visitors, businesses, younger or older people. There are also functional tabs providing you with contact information and enabling you to go straight to our online reporting, application or payment transactions. The final point to note about the header section is the “breadcrumb trail” displayed just beneath the header tabs on all pages. The breadcrumb trail is a navigation aid that shows you where you are on the website and allows you to quickly access upper levels of the site.

• The left hand side contains the menus, which consists of links to the main sections of the site. This column is also used to direct you to complementary areas of the website under the “See Also” heading.

• The central section contains the main text area of the site and consists of the main content or information for that page.

• The right hand side has links to related pages, documents or online services as well as links to other useful websites.

• The footer, at the bottom of the page, holds the main contact details for the council together with links to; Terms & conditions, Privacy policy, Disclaimer and Site Statistics. You will also find a link to information about Freedom of Information here.

Searching this site

The "search for" box lets you search for specific information on this site. The search facility can be found in the top right-hand corner of all the pages on this site.

To search for something, simply type a keyword into the search box and then click on "Search". A keyword is a word or phrase that relates to a particular topic of information - for example, if you wanted to find information on Council Tax, simply type "council tax" into the search box and click "Search". A new page will open, displaying a number of links to pages containing that keyword and you can then click on a link to get to more information.

The site also has an Advanced Search facility (the link "Advanced Search"), which will allow you to search in each section of the website and set how you would like answers returned.
Downloading documents Forms and larger documents on our site are usually PDFs. This means that they are in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format and you need Acrobat Reader to view it, you can get this free viewer from the Adobe Systems website.

Each time there is a PDF on the site it will say what size it is. It is useful to know this as sometimes very large PDFs can take a long time to download if you are accessing the internet using a modem.

Links to other websites

This site contains a number of links to external sites. If you have problems using these sites, you should contact their webmaster to report the fault.

To print a Web page:

1. On the File menu, click Print.
2. Set the printing options you want

To add a page to your list of favourites in Netscape:

1. Open the page you wish to bookmark in Netscape
2. Click "Bookmarks" in the task bar
3. Choose "bookmark this page" to your list of bookmarked web sites.

Accessibility and text only version

Southampton Online Accessibility Statement is available by clicking on the "See Also" link to the left of this text.

A text-only version Southampton cityweb is available. This contains all of the text from the Internet, but does not show any graphics, images or photographs. The text-only version can help visually impaired users access information. To access the text only version, click on the "text only" link on the top navigation bar.