Introduction to the web site

The U3A web site automatically adjusts to the amount of space available to display pages on your chosen device.

For example, this is how one of our web pages might appear in a good size window on a desktop PC:

This is how the same page might appear on a tablet:

The header text and logo are smaller and the right hand column has folded underneath the main text of the article.

This is how the same page might appear on a mobile phone:

The header has folded onto two lines and the menu bar has been replaced by a drop down. Click the drop down to see the menu bar like this:

In the previous section we showed how the menu bar can appear differently depending on the width of your browser.

If you have a mouse or similar pointing device, you can hover over a menu item to see any sub-menu items. For example, hovering a mouse over 'Groups' in the menu bar shows this for a normal sized browser window:

And this in a typical 'phone sized window:

Either way, you can use your mouse to see all the menu options and you can click any of them to go to the relevant page.

Some devices, such as tablets and 'phones don't have mice. The web site detects this and behaves slightly differently. If you tap a menu item that has a sub-menu, the web site displays the sub-menu with the first tap. Tap the item a second time to go to the linked page. In the above example, tapping 'Groups' shows the groups sub menu, tapping 'Groups' again shows an introduction to the group services. Tapping a menu item, such as 'Open groups' takes you directly to that page.

For the rest of this walkthrough we'll use the term 'click' to mean 'click' or 'tap' depending on your device. Similarly we'll use 'Press enter' which could also mean 'tap go' if your device uses an on-screen keyboard.

The menu bar has an icon like this:

If you click it, the icon expands to an entry box like this:

You can then enter the text you're looking for and press enter to start a search.

The web site will display any matching entries or some text that might help you find what you're looking for.

At the bottom of every page you'll see a set of links displayed like this:

Note the 'Web site walkthrough' link allows you to return to these pages any time you want.

We'll be coming back to the items in the 'Site management' column later in the walkthrough. The other pages linked from the 'About the site' column provide the site's 'small print'.

The web site has two main parts:

1. The part visible to the public
2. The members' area visible only to members that have logged-in

The next part of the walkthrough describes the part of the site visible to everyone. We'll then take a look at what happens when you log in to the site.