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Benton County Website Help

In an attempt to unify the presentation of information and provide a better service to the citizens of Benton County, the County Website was completely redesigned and rebuilt. As a part of this effort, new functionality and behavior have been built into the web pages to make them more informative and easier to use.

The purpose of this page is to explain the layout features of the Benton County Website and help you make full use of its features and functionality. If you have any questions about the County Website that are not answered on this page, please feel free to contact the webmaster using either our Contact page or by sending an e-mail to the webmaster.

Thank you,

The Benton County Website Development Team

General Layout

The Benton County website is designed to present information in a fixed width display area, centered in your browser window. The reason for selecting this method is that it allows us to precisely control layout and presentation while simplifying maintenance and manageability. While the site is optimized to fit within a maximized browser window at an 800x600 resolution, it presents equally well in both higher resolution and lower resolution environments.

What this means, generally, for you is that the display area used by the site will not change. The width and arrangement of the page elements will remain the same throughout your time browsing the County's website. Exceptions to this occur when you select any link that goes to a PDF document, the presentation of which is controlled by the Adobe Reader, or any link that goes to an image file (i.e. many of our maps). These items are not contained within our framework and will appear in their native fashion.

The Benton County website's common framework for information presentation is composed of:

• a two row header with site level functions and links
• a logo and banner
• a page title
• a two-column body section with
  • the navigation column
  • the main content column
• a two row footer with
  • links to policy information and the webmaster email link
  • department level address information

Functional Notes

E-mail Links

Throughout the site, you will come across links for sending an e-mail; either to a specific person or to a group of people. These are standard HTML mailto links that require that you have a properly configured e-mail client in order for the link to work. These links make use of this configuration in your computer to tell your email client to send an email to a given address. If these links do not work for you, please feel free to use the contact forms provided in every section of the website.

Javascript

In the interests of compatibility and accessibility, we have purposefully designed and built our site to use almost no client-side functionality, i.e. Javascript. In some cases, this means we haven't made things as flashy or dynamic as is possible; but we believe this will provide for a resource that is more widely useable. However, in order to make full use of the menu navigation, if you are using Microsoft's Internet Explorer, you must allow Javascript to function. Because of Internet Explorer's incomplete support for standards, Javascript must be used to force Internet Explorer to behave properly under some conditions.

Section Descriptions

Page Header

The page header is a static element that is present on every page of the site. It will always present the same information, regardless of the page currently being viewed.

The top row of the header displays the current date on the left-hand side. On the right-hand side of the header's top row are the following items, in order from left to right.

• Home - a link to the County home page
• Contact Us - a link to the main Webmaster contact form
• Help - a link to the page you are currently reading
• A A A - links allowing you to change from large to normal to small font sizes

The lower row of the header provides site-wide access to the site's search function on the left-hand side. On the right-hand side are the folling items, in order from left to right.

• Departments & Committees - a link to a page listing all the departments and committees referenced throughout the website.
• Topics A - Z - a link to a topical index for the website

Banner

The banner row actually contains two images. On the left is the County logo. This image is also a hyperlink to the website's front page. The actual banner is one of several images that are selected and presented by a random selection program using a collection of images from all across the county.

Page Title

Below the logo and banner images is the page title. This title should describe the contents of the page in as concise and accurate a manner as possible.

Main Navigation

Below the page title and to the left-hand side of the display area is the site's main navigation. The navigation elements available will change according to the section of the website you are browsing. Basically, every department has its own navigation elements and when you are within a department's section of the site, you will only see that navigation.

Exceptions to this are the first navigation element, Departments. This element provides site-wide access to the root pages of each of the departments and major divisions within the County's structure. Regardless of where you are on the site, the department list is always available as the first navigation element.

The section below the department list is the section that will change as you move through the various departments and sections of the site. Note that when you are within a specific department's section of the site, the first element in this area will change to Home. This navigation item will take you to the "home page" for the current department or division.

The bottom section of the navigation elements contains two navigation items. The first is the Contact Us link. This will take you to the relevant contact page for the department or section you are browsing. Below this link is a link to the County Home Page. This link will always take yout to the root of the site.

Main Content Area

The main content area is where the information for the current topic will be displayed. This is the core content of the web page and the part that will change on every page you visit.

Page Footer

The top row of the page footer contains the following:

• Liability & Privacy Policy - a link to the liability and privacy policy page for the Benton County website
• Copyright - a link to the copyright policy page for the Benton County website
• E-mail Webmaster - an email link to send a message to the Webmaster (please note that you must have a properly configured email client for this and all email links on the website)

The lower row of the page footer contains address and telephone information for the current department or division you are viewing. If you are not in a specific department's area of the site, this area will display the default county address information.

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