How to use this site - help and tips
Welcome to our website. It has been designed to be easy to use and accessible for all types of internet user - from beginner to expert.

This section of the site will give you hints and tips on how to make the most of the content and tools available on the site and help you to find your way around.

 Best viewed
 Navigation
 Accessibility
 How the navigation works
 Downloading documents
 Printing
 Translations
 Maps
 Searching
 Plain English
 Further help
 Site statistics and service levels
 Our privacy statement

Best viewed
The site has been designed to work with a screen resolution of 800x600 but is best viewed in 1024x768. If you are using a computer running Windows you can change the resolution by right clicking your mouse on the desktop - selecting the properties option and then the settings tab. Adjust the screen area sliding scale and click apply or ok.

You should also make sure your colours are set to at least High. This can be done in the same place.

The site is designed to work well in all common browsers but works best with version 5+ of Microsoft Internet Explorer. Please report any browser problems you have to webmanager@wandsworth.gov.uk The site should also work equally well with Apple Mac computers.

Navigation
All Council functions and services are categorised by six main headings.

Community Services - Providing links to the pages on the site detailing the services that are provided to residents and businesses in the borough. From the Arts section to the Youth Service.

Children and Young People - Providing links to the pages on the site detailing the services that are provided to children and young people, their parents and carers and teachers and professionals.

Council and Government - Detailing the information about the Council, councillors, elections, voting, council tax and other matters including the full press release database.

Environment and Transport - Grouping together all the information about the physical environment of the borough and the services provided relating to the environment and transport. From building control to waste management, this section includes the Planning Service, Parking Service and Environmental Services.

Leisure and Tourism - Covering all services and projects providing leisure to our residents. Find out what the Council offers and keep up to date with events and what's on.

My Wandsworth - Providing easy access to most of the main on-line services and interactive features of the site, including payments, find my nearest tools, maps and other features.

The other headings are Contact us - detailing everything you need to know about how to contact Council departments and Search - providing tools to search the site content.

How the navigation works
Each heading is colour coded to help you always be aware of where you are on the site. The colours are shown above. When you click on a heading on the left hand side you are directed to a summary page which details the headings for each of the pages within that group. You will also note that the menu on the left hand side expands to detail the page names.

Click on the links in either area to go to the home page of the section or service you want to find out about. You can always click on any of the left-hand options to navigate back from where you are.

To return to the home page - click on the Council logo at the top left from any page.

You can use the breadcrumb trail on the top right of the page to step back through the site navigation.

Go to top links are available on longer pages to return you to the top of the page and a Top of page link can be found on the footer of every page.

Downloads
The Council makes widespread use of the ability to download documents to your computer. There are clear advantages to this for larger documents as they can be downloaded and read 'off-line' (without being connected to the internet) and printed out if required.

Most downloads are in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF). Adobe have developed a document format that is consistent no matter what your browser, computer or set-up.

Most computers come with Adobe Reader (the viewing software) already installed, but if you do not have it on your machine, it can be downloaded free of charge at www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html. Please check that you have sufficient privileges to the computer you are using to install the software, otherwise please contact your network administrator (not normally necessary for home-users).

You can recognise the PDF documents where you see this icon.

We will also tell you how large the file is, so you can estimate how long it will take to download. (For normal modem connections - approx 25-35kb per second.

Users that have difficulty using pdf documents can convert them to appear as a normal webpage at www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/access_simple_form.html.

Printing
The pages are on this site are designed to print for A4 paper. Use the file - print command in your browser to print a page. You will notice that the side-bar navigation and colour header are not printed.

Translations
Unfortunately we are not currently able to translate the material on our web site from English into all of the different languages spoken in the borough. To help non-English speakers, we have provided information on our interpreting service below, and a link to the free translation service, 'Babelfish' from Altavista which will translate the information on web pages from English into French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. The translation will not be perfect, but you should be able to understand it. You will find the translation service at babelfish.altavista.com.

You can also find information about the Wandsworth Interpreting Service here.

Maps
There are many maps used on this site. You can use our GIS (Geographic Information System) to navigate detailed maps of the borough or to aerial views. This system is already used to allow users to view planning applications by maps, find a range of locations in the borough and view the Unitary Development Plan on-line. We will be developing this system to also allow users to locate a range of community information including 'my nearest'.

We also use a pictorial maps for the locations of parking zones and link to www.streetmap.co.uk to provide detailed street maps of the areas surrounding libraries, leisure centres etc.

Searching
You can search the site using our powerful search engine. If you enter a word or phrase in the search field, you will be given a number of pages that match your entry. Each link has a short extract from the page text to help you decide if it is the information you are looking for. Click on the page name to visit the page. You will note that the word(s) you entered are highlighted in yellow on the page, helping you to quickly find the matching text.

If you are searching for a particular phrase try entering speech marks round the entire phrase. This will enable the search engine to only find pages where the phrase is complete. For example you could enter "Furzedown Ward".

 Search menus

Plain English
The website has been granted Internet Crystal Mark status by the Plain English Campaign - only the fourth Local Authority site to be recognised for meeting their standards.

An independent body regularly checks the site to ensure it meets plain English standards and that the information is presented in a way that is clear, concise and free from jargon.

What is Plain English? - The campaign defines 'Plain English as being something that the intended audience can read, understand and act upon the first time they read it. Plain English takes into account design and layout as well as language.'

Help
If you are having particular problems with the site or finding what you want - we need to know. Please email the website manager at webmanager@wandsworth.gov.uk for assistance.