OF THE LAW SOCIETY OF SCOTLAND - The Journal Online

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Finding, Keeping, Sending Journal IT It’s becoming increasingly common for fee-earners to have computers on their desks. Unfortunately, few firms bother spending much money on training lawyers how to use them properly. Scott Cownie illustrates some common techniques in making Internet Explorer and Outlook talk to each other Many primary materials are now available on the Internet. The Scottish Courts website at www.scotcourts.gov.uk is one example. Practically all Supreme Court decisions and some Sheriff Court decisions are published on it, usually within a day or two, and certainly sooner than printed case reports. Being able to see decisions as soon as they are issued is one thing, but to get value out of it, you need to know how to manipulate the information. There is a slight problem with the structure of the scotcourts site, stemming from its use of HTML frames to organise the layout of the site. This makes some processes less intuitive than with other sites.There are, however, some simple work-arounds, and these may be worth learning as they can be used to resolve the frames problem which occurs in several “official” sites. Here’s how to: ■ Set the “Supreme Court structured search” page as a “favorite”. ■ Save particular cases to your machine. ■ Attach the case to an e-mail. Setting “favorites” You’ll be familiar with the structure of a typical website address, in this example, www.scotcourts.gov.uk. This address is associated with a particular piece of space on a server, a server being a computer which is programmed to “serve” up pages when requested by someone like you through an Internet browser, such as Internet Explorer. The space contains a series of pages, usually organised within a set of directories. Later on, I’ll be looking at an address within the scotcourts site called www.scotcourts.gov.uk/cgibin/Supreme.pl, where scotcourts.gov.uk is the space on the server, cgi-bin is a directory within that space and Supreme.pl is a file within that directory. If this seems abstract, think filing cabinet / folder / letter. It’s easy to set a particular site as a “favorite” by clicking Favorites | Add to Favorites… from the menu bar at the top of the browser screen. This pops up a dialog box, which allows you to add that particular page to your list of Favorites, and you can then return to that page in the future by clicking the favorites icon in the browser to show your list and then clicking the site title in the list, saving you from having to remember the address. 41 May 2002 Volume 47 No 5
Journal IT Opening a target in a new However, it’s also possible t o s e t window is particular pages within also useful the site as favorites, which allows you to “deep-link” directly to the page, and saves you having to start at the front page and click your way through the navigational elements of the site. In this particular case, setting up a deeplink directly to the Supreme Court structured search page allows you to go directly to that page and saves you having to trawl through four intermediate pages. This is where the frames problem arises. You need to know the page address to set it as a favorite. The address www.scotcourts.gov.uk is not actually a page, it’s just a space which contains pages. By default, when you type that address in, it loads a page called index1.htm. Normally, as you click through a site, you’ll see that the page address changes in the address bar, and, if it does, you can save any particular page as a favorite without any difficulty. This doesn’t happen with scotcourts. You’ll see that it initially loads a page called www.scotcourts.gov.uk/index1.htm. Click through the site to other pages, and you’ll see that the address is always index1.htm. Accordingly, if you try to set any page as a favorite, you will always arrive at the opening page instead of a direct deep link to the page you are interested in.This is because the frames structure always initially loads index1.htm which itself contains no substantive contents, just instructions to split the screen into a left hand frame containing a navigation menu, and a right hand frame containing the substantive contents. To get round this, from the opening page of scotcourts, find your way to the Supreme Courts search page. As per figure one, the green bit on the left is one page consisting of navigation options and the right hand bit is the substantive content. Both these pages are loaded into the two separate frames set up by index1.htm. You are always looking at index1.htm, even though its contents may periodically change depending on the navigation choices you make. Now, however, instead of using the left mouse button to click on the words “Structured Search”, click the right mouse button. From the menu which appears, click “Open in New Window”.This opens a new instance of your browser, and, this time, instead of loading index1.htm all over again, it loads just the Supreme Courts structured search page, and you’ll see that the address is now May 2002 Volume 47 No 5 42 www.scotcourts.gov.uk/cgi-bin/Supreme.pl.This is a particular page address which you normally can’t see within a frames structure.You can now add this page to favorites as described above. Now, this may seem a little pointless, but it doesn’t just save you having to click through from the opening page each time you want to do a Supreme Courts structured search. If you find a case while still within the frames structure, and want to save it to your machine, remember that you are looking at index1.htm which just happens to be showing that case at the time, and also the green navigation menu on the left hand side. If you try to save this case, you will just save index1.htm, not the contents: basically, when you open up the saved file, you will see nothing. However, if you follow the procedures described, to allow you to open the search page directly, any cases found will be loaded directly, not within index1.htm, and you can then save them directly. Despite the problems with navigation, saving, bookmarking and printing, which framesets give rise to, a surprising number of sites insist on using them. Knowing that you can right-click and open the destination in a new window is a good work-around. Opening a target in a new window is also useful when, say, you find a list of resources on a page, such as the searchresults within scotcourts, and want to work your way through them without having to jump backwards and forwards between the searchresults and each case.You can right-click on each case and open it in its own window. If you take an interest in the development of your own website, this line of source-code will place these words “Add this page to Favorites” on your page, and will call the Favorites dialog box when clicked. Add this page to Favorites The thinking behind this is that there’s a school of thought which says that if a user option is made more explicit, users will be more likely to take it. You might want to include this line on a page which carries an article about an area of law which is under review, with say, a by-line saying, Figure 1 “The Scottish Executive has issued a consultation paper on possible reforms in this area. Bookmark this page here as we’ll be updating this page as matters develop.” People may be more inclined to come back and then instruct you, or they may not. Saving cases to your machine Well, let’s be frank about this: unless you’ve been brave enough to ask your secretary what the difference between “save” and “save as…” is, you’re probably still printing cases out and then dealing with them as you would any other form of printed media. Here’s how to store them on your machine, so that you can do whatever you like with them later on. Minimise other programs so that you have a clear view of the computer’s “desktop”. Click the right mouse button. From the menu which appears, put the mouse over “New “, then from the submenu, click “Folder”.A new folder appears on the desktop. Give it an appropriate name, such as “Cases” by right-clicking on it, and selecting “Rename” from the menu which appears. This sets up a folder for future use. When you find a case you’re interested in you can save it here. Say you’re in the Supreme Courts search page, you’ve found a case and need to save it. From the menu bar at the top of the page, click “file | save as”.This opens a dialog box. At the “Save in..” select menu at the top of the box, find and click the “Cases” folder.The textarea should fill up to show other files already in that folder. At the “File Name” box, you can rename the file to whatever you think appropriate. At the “Save as Type” select menu, you can leave the type as “Web page, complete”, but if the page has lots of unnecessary pictures which you’re not interested in, you can change the type to “Web page, HTML only” to save just the words. Then click “Save”.The file will now be in the folder. To view it later, click or double-click it, depending on the set-up of your machine. It should open in Internet Explorer. You may wish to take a quote out of the decision to put into a letter: put the cursor at the start of the section you’re interested in then press the left mouse button down. Keeping it down, drag the cursor to the end of the section, then release the button. The section should now be highlighted blue. Put the cursor over the blue section and right-click. From the menu which appears, click “copy”. This puts the section into a temporary storage area called the “clipboard”. Go to the letter, or e-mail or whatever, place the cursor at the appropriate point, then right-click, and from the menu which appears, click “paste”. The section should be placed into the letter. (Incidentally, “Save” is used
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Page 5 and 6: Journal News Information from the R
Page 7 and 8: Journal News Obituaries LEONARD ELL
Page 9 and 10: Journal News Authors Wanted The Soc
Page 11 and 12: No increase in funding commitment W
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Page 15 and 16: Sleeping with the enemy Journal Opi
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Page 23 and 24: “Some pleasure has been expressed
Page 25 and 26: Minutes of Tender Manson v Skinner
Page 27 and 28: “Back in 1999 when I was elected
Page 29 and 30: Journal New Rules May 2002 Volume 4
Page 31 and 32: Journal President The Preston front
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Page 39 and 40: Journal e: In Practice bruceritchie
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