Do you want some help navigating this VBS website?

For answers to the following frequently asked questions,
just click on the question:

How do I. . .

1. Move around the pages of the VBS website?

2. Find the VBS information I’m looking for?

3. Know where on the screen to click?

4. Know what page I’m on?

5. Move around on a page?

6. Go back to a page I’ve previously looked at?

7. Get more help for using this website?

ANSWERS:

1. How do I move around the pages of the VBS website?

The basic method for moving to the page you want is to drag your mouse cursor over the main menu bar that runs across the top of every VBS website page. (Don’t press any mouse buttons while doing this.) This maroon bar lists a dozen section titles (“ Home ”, “ Events ”, etc.). 

Some of the main menu titles (such as Home or Contact Us ) relate to a single page destination. When you pass your mouse cursor over that main menu title, the background changes from maroon to red (indicating that it has been selected), and your cursor icon turns into a pointing hand (indicating that if you click on the selected menu item, you’ll move to that page).

Other main menu titles (such as Events or @VBS ) have several page locations associated with them. When you pass your mouse cursor over this type of title, the background will change from maroon to red (indicating that it has been selected), but your cursor icon will not change into a pointing hand. Nothing will happen if you try to click directly on that title. Instead, when you pass your mouse cursor over the title, a “drop-down” submenu instantly appears under the title.

As you drag your mouse cursor over the sub-headings in the drop-down menu, the sub-heading under your cursor changes background color from maroon to red (indicating that it has been selected), and your cursor icon does turn into a pointing hand (indicating that if you click on the selected submenu item, you’ll move to that page).

Sometimes there are three menu levels:
(1) a main menu title ( Clergy );
(2) a drop-down submenu title ( Rabbi Edward M. Feinstein , etc.) that has a white triangle pointing to the side; and
(3) a side fly-out submenu with further choices ( Sermons and Articles , etc.).
You must click on a sub-title in this side sub-menu in order to move to the page.

2. How do I find the VBS information I’m looking for?

GET FAMILIAR WITH THE MAIN MENU BAR: Finding the website page that contains the information you’re seeking is usually quite simple on the VBS website. The key is to take a moment to get familiar with the site by passing your mouse cursor across the maroon main menu bar at the top of the page and reading the sub-title that appear on the various drop-down menus. 

Some main menu titles are obvious—If you want to learn about a VBS Rabbi or Cantor, you’d place your mouse cursor over the Clergy title in the main menu bar and either click on the name, or if a fly-out menu appears, click on the Biography title.

Some main menu titles may not be so obvious—If you want to learn about the VBS stained glass windows, you probably wouldn’t think about looking under the @VBS menu title unless you’d previously passed your cursor over all of the main menu titles to get familiar with the sub-titles in the drop-down menus.

A GOOGLE SEARCH OF THE VBS SITE: Finding information is made easier by the fact that there are often several paths that can lead you to your goal. For example, at the top right of each page is a Google search box. If you were to type in the words stained glass and click on the Go link next to the box, you would see the first of many pages of a Google search for those words, but with the search restricted to our VBS website rather than the entire internet. If you click on the first reference listed, you’ll be taken to the same page that you would have found (but would have found faster in this particular case) if you had directly clicked on @VBS>Stained Glass Windows in the main menu.

FOCUS ON CURRENT MATTERS: Other alternative paths to the information you seek may often be simpler and faster. A special feature on the VBS Home page (the page first displayed when you go to www.vbs.org ) is the In Focus list of events and information of special current interest.

For example, when the High Holidays are approaching, the In Focus list might include information about VBS’s High Holidays services schedule, the topics of the Rabbis’ sermons, etc. Just a single click on one of these items will immediately take you to the information you want. If you don’t find a link in the list to a current or upcoming event you’re looking for, try clicking on the last item, …more events .

CONTACT THE RIGHT PERSON AT VBS: We’ve worked hard to make the VBS website helpful and convenient for you, and we’re continually working to improve it. But sometimes what you really need is to talk with a particular rabbi, cantor, professional, administrative staff member, or congregational volunteer. The VBS website can help you with that, also. Just click on the last title at the right end of the main menu, Contact Us , to view a full directory of VBS contacts with their direct telephone numbers and where applicable an immediate link to their direct email addresses. Contacts are indexed in several ways:

(1) an alphabetical list according to the subject matter (Choir, Membership Information, Hebrew School, etc.),
(2) a professional staff directory, and
(3) a direct dial telephone directory by departments.

In addition, the top of the Contact Us page provides VBS’s general mailing address, email address, telephone number, and fax number, as well as a link for immediate emailing.

3. How do I know where on the screen to click?

On the internet, certain text or image areas of a page are “live” or “hot” spots. When you roll or click your mouse on one of these areas, something different appears on your screen. Sometimes merely passing or hovering your mouse over the area displays an expansion of text or graphics information at or next to that screen location. (The VBS website drop-down menus are an example.) Sometimes when you click on a hot link you’ll be taken to a different location on the same page, a different location on a different page of the VBS website, or even a different website.

The VBS website follows the standard conventions for showing a hot link. The basic clue is that your cursor icon changes to a pointing hand. Typically text that is hot-linked will be blue and underlined. In addition, the blue color of VBS website text links brightens in intensity when your cursor is over it. When you see the hand icon (for text or image links) and the brighter blue (for text links), you know that a click will cause some change. For a text link, just position your cursor anywhere in the underlined blue text and click; there is no need to drag and select the entire phrase.

Graphic images often don’t indicate that they are hot-linked until you pass your mouse cursor over them. The icons for The Schulweis Institute, Jewish World Watch, and Amazon.com at the bottom of the VBS Home page are not otherwise labeled, but are each hot-linked to those respective sites. (The best advice for handling graphic links may be to watch what your children or grandchildren do—they hover or click on images just to see what will happen.)

4. How do I know what page I’m on?

OK, we love books too, but pages on the internet just aren’t numbered the way book pages are.  In fact, website “pages” don’t even have a standard page length. You can see the entirety of some pages at one time on your computer screen; but other pages are so long that you must scroll down the page, using your mouse wheel or the scroll bar on the right side of your screen, in order to read all the information. On very long pages, there may be some sort of “ Top ” button to help you quickly return to the beginning of the page. (For example, this Help page has a Back to Top button at the end of each answer so that when you’re finished with one answer you can view and select another question from the full list of questions at the top.)

On the internet, pages have names instead of numbers. So to make clear where you are at any time, the VBS website has a second bar across the top of each page, this one blue, that shows the name of the current page, as well as the menu structure that leads to the page.

For example, regardless of how you got to Rabbi Feinstein’s Biography page, the blue information bar would show the name of that page ( Biography ) as the last item of all the menu and submenu steps that identify the location of that particular Biography page ( Home>Clergy>Rabbi Edward M. Feinstein>Biography ).

5. How do I move around on a page?

See the first part of the answer to the previous question (“ 4. How do I know what page I’m on? ”) for a discussion of the standard ways of moving around a website page: using your mouse wheel or the scroll bar on the right side of your screen in order to scroll up or down the page, or clicking on any shortcut navigation buttons such as a “ Top ” button or other links to locations on the same page.

Another method for page navigation is to take advantage of the Page Up , Page Down , Home , and End keys on your keyboard. The Page Up/Down keys will move through a long page one screen at a time so that you won’t miss a line, while the Home/End keys will jump to the top or bottom of the page. (If these keys don’t work with your computer, try combining your keystrokes with the various modifier keys— Shift , Ctrl/Cmd , Alt/Opt , or Control or Function on the MAC until you find a combination that does work.) If you spend a lot of time online, you may find that intermixing keyboard and mouse commands makes page navigation very easy and efficient, and it may also reduce the risk of hand and wrist pain.

The VBS website should display the full width of each page on your computer screen. If you’re not seeing all of the text and you can see a horizontal scroll bar across the bottom of your screen, it probably means that your computer browser program (MS-Explorer, AOL, Yahoo, etc.) is showing the website in a reduced-size window. You can usually fix this in your browser by dragging out the sides of the window or setting the window to “maximize” (display at Full Screen size).

Depending upon your computer’s operating system and browser program, you can typically change to a Full Screen window view by clicking on an icon at the top of the window frame, or else clicking in a command menu at the top of the screen, or right-clicking on the window tab at the bottom of your screen.

If your browser program permits, you may be able to format your view of internet pages by increasing the size of the screen text to a setting that is more comfortable for you. This should not affect your ability to view the full width of the website pages.

6. How do I go back to a page I’ve previously looked at?

It would be wonderful if every simple question had a simple answer. This one doesn’t. One of the major advantages of internet browsing is the ability to quickly and effortlessly jump to a related page or website with a single click on a hot link. Unfortunately, if you keep clicking and jumping on successive pages, you’re soon out somewhere in a virtual forest without any trail of breadcrumbs to help you get back. All of us have had the frustrating internet experience of attempting to close a window to return to our starting point only to find that we’ve somehow managed to close our entire browser program. Here are some tips to help you get back to VBS when you are browsing through the VBS website:

VBS MENU BAR: As long as you’re still on one of the basic VBS website pages, the VBS maroon main menu bar appears across the top of the page. Use the main menu and its drop-down submenus to return to the VBS page you seek. You can click on the Home title to start over on the VBS Home page.

BROWSER BACK BUTTON: Sometimes the VBS site will take you to a page or a related site that does not show the VBS main menu bar across the top. (Some examples include viewing the Events>Master Calendar page, or listening to an audio file from the @VBS>Who’s Who page.) To return to a previous VBS page where you cannot use the main menu bar, click on your browser program’s Back button (often a left-pointing arrow at the top of your browser window). If you’ve gone several steps away from a basic VBS page, you can move back in steps by repeatedly clicking on the Back button. Your browser program may also feature a History list that lets you click on any earlier page that you visited during your current session.

CLOSE THE WINDOW:  Sometimes the VBS site will take you to another site that does not show the VBS main menu bar but also does not have an active Back button (it’s grayed out). Generally this means that the screen you are looking at has opened in a new window, and so the previous VBS page is still open in another window underneath it. For example, if you go to the Schulweis Institute or to one of the sites listed on the VBS website’s Jewish Links page by starting from the hot link at the bottom of the Home page, the target site will typically open in a new window.

If you’re viewing the new site in a reduced-size window you’ll actually see some of the underlying VBS page surrounding it. To return to the VBS page, simply click anywhere on the visible part of the VBS page.  Alternatively, you can close the top (new page) window by clicking on the Close (“ X ”) button at top of that window frame, or use a browser menu command or keyboard shortcut, depending upon your browser.

If you’re viewing the new site in a full-size window you won’t be able to see the underlying VBS page even though it’s still open. To be safe, try a two-step procedure: First hover or click your mouse on your browser’s Back button to see if it is active. If the Back button has no effect, then close the new window by clicking on the Close (“ X ”) button at top of the window.

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