AustLII’s ‘UserMark’ (or ‘AustLII Automated Markup for Users’) tool allows you to automate links to AustLII’s legislation and High Court decisions from your own web pages no matter where they are located. UserMark is still being extended to provide automated links to other case law as well, and improved in other ways.

The point of UserMark is that it can save you a great deal of time and effort in creating web resources with lots of references to legislation and cases. Get the citations right, and the hypertext links will follow automatically ... most of the time.

2.1.1. Browse to UserMark and read the instructions

There is a link to UserMark from the bottom of the front page of AustLII. It is at http://www.austlii.edu.au/techlib/usermark/

Read the instructions and hints.

2.1.2. Type some text containing legislation references into UserMark

Type in some text containing legislation references (Cth. ACT or NSW) relevant to your page in the ‘Paste the text to be processed here:’ box in UserMark. Make sure you give the full references to the legislation, particularly the year. For example:

Leave the output setting as ‘HTML’. Then press Markup Now!

2.1.3. Insert the marked-up text into your page

Select the marked-up text, then copy it into memory [View | Copy]. Go back to your page in the Editor [Window | Editor ...].

Using the editor, place the cursor where you wish to insert the text on your page. Paste the text

into your page.

The links should now work from your page - test them. Where links are wrong, you will have to correct them by hand using Netscape Composer.

2.1.4. An example of using UserMark over a whole page

The real value of UserMark is where a web page exists with large numbers of legislative references but no hypertext links. For example, see the article ‘The Barrett Review' in Privacy Law and Policy Reporter, (1997) (1994) 1 PLPR 161, located at http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/PLPR/1994/123.html

This example shows both accurate links and errors that UserMark makes because it sometimes makes a mistake concerning the Act within which a section occurs (see hints above).

Type or paste the URL into the box shown below:

Leave the output setting as ‘HTML’. Then press Markup Now! Inspect the new page displayed, and the number of hypertext links that have now been inserted.

To use a page marked up like this it would be necessary to save it with the same name as the previous page, and publish it to the same location, thereby replacing the old page with the marked-up one.

2.1.5. Find a plain text legal document on the web and mark it up [optional]

Find some document on the web which has legislative references but no links (e.g. a law reform report or annual report of some agency). Run UserMark over it to see if it creates accurate links. Don't save the file - avoid breaches of copyright.

2.2. Creating index/search facilities using AustLII’s indexes

Many web pages contain lists of links to other relevant sites - in effect, small internet indexes. AustLII has a very extensive indexes to Australian law on the internet (Australian Law Index - http://www.austlii.edu.au/links/1.html) and to world law (World Law Index (http://www.austlii.edu.au/links/270.html).

You can submit links to be added to these indexes, on the AustLII index pages concerning the particular topic in which you are interested. This is an alternative to maintaining sets of links on that topic on your own web page. Advantages of doing so are:

you share the work of creating an index to a topic with others (including AustLII editors) who are indexing that topic; and
the AustLII index can be searched, not just browsed, because AustLII sends a web spider to most sites it indexes.
the particular web site can also be searched using the 'Search this site' facility in World Law.

You can then link your page directly to that part of the AustLII index, including by creating embedded searches from your page over the site you have indexed (and made searchable) via AustLII (this is covered in the next section of this Tutorial).

2.2.1. Link your tutorial page to the most relevant AustLII index page

Find the page in AustLII’s index most relevant to your tutorial topic (‘the relevant AustLII index page’). Create a link to it from your page.

2.2.2. Use ‘Add a Link’ to submit a link to that AustLII index page

Find a web page that is relevant to your tutorial topic, but not in AustLII’s index (‘the page to be indexed’).

Now open a second instance of the Netscape browser (‘New Web Browser’ under File), and move it so you can see parts of both browsers at once. In the second browser, go to the relevant AustLII index page where you think the page to be indexed would be most appropriately listed.

Select ‘Add a Link’ from the top of the page, and a form such as is shown below will appear. Read the instructions at the top of the form, then fill it out with the details of the page to be indexed. You should copy and paste the URL of the page, to ensure accuracy.

[Note - Unfortunately, the form-based 'Add a Link' facility is not working at present. There is only an email facility. The information you should provide is as follows:

(i) URL of site / resource to be linked;

(ii) Title of site / resource;

(iii) A brief description - about 20 words is ideal (see the Index for examples).]

2.2.3. What happens next?

All links that are submitted come to AustLII’s index editors for approval before they are added to the AustLII index. They are edited if necessary, and then added it to the index. This usually happens every few days, sometimes more frequently.

In most cases, we send our web spider (gromit) to index every word on the site, and the full text of the site becomes searchable in World Law shortly thereafter (it will often take a week or more).

2.3. Adding stored search links

You can include on your pages links which are not static but carry out specific searches using web search engines on other sites.

There is not much point trying to create hypertext links to a moving target. Why create links to a list of cases or sections on a topic if both are likely to change? Stored search links are far more powerful.

Examples of stored searches:

The ‘Noteup’ button at the top of each legislation section on AustLII - try it, for example , on a section of the Copyright Act [14].
The 'Search World Law for ......' link on any country page [15] in AustLII's World Law Index. Try it on the page of a country that is of interest to you.

Stored searches also allow you to capture your expertise in constructing searches for the benefit of other users, who may be less able than you to construct appropriate searches, either because of a lack of search skills, or a lack of knowledge of the subject area.

They are equivalent to bookmarking a successful search, but making it available to others.

2.3.1. Stored searches over AustLII

Go to AustLII’s SINO search screen - http://www.austlii.edu.au/do/form.pl- , and construct and run a search over AustLII which is relevant to your page (e.g. ‘copyright near database’ is relevant to an IP page).

Once you have refined the search enough, go to the ‘Search result’ page, and copy the long URL in the ‘Location:’ or ‘Netsite:’ box (e.g. http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinocgi.cgi?method=boolean&meta=/au&mask_path=&mask_world=&query=copyright+near+database&results=50&submit=Search&rank=on&callback=on&legisopt=- Try it - it does work!)

Go to your page in the editor. Type in some text explaining the search (e.g. ‘Search for materials on copyright in databases’), select it, and make a link using the link icon

. In the ‘Link to a page location or local file’ box, paste in the long URL.

2.3.2. Stored searches over part of AustLII

Repeat the above process, with the same or a different search, but search over some part of AustLII (e.g. legislation only). Note the differences in the URL.

Try the following:

A stored search just over AustLII's legislation, or just over case law, or over a specific database;
A stored search over AustLII's World Law (http://www.austlii.edu.au/links/), either from this front page or (sometimes more useful) from one of the Subject Index or Country pages. Use it as a stored search.

2.3.3. Stored searches over other search engines

You can use the same technique to embed stored searches over many other search engines on your pages. Some search engines do not allow this.

For an example of embedding searches using other search engines, go to Alta Vista (http://www.altavista.com/) and construct an 'Advanced Search'. The instructions for Advanced Searches are available from the top of the Alta Vista search form. Run your search (and refine it if necessary), then construct an search link from your page, using the same method as above.

For example, to create a search for only Australian material on telecommunications interception, you can use the following advanced search:

 "telecommunications interception" and domain:au

The quotes means that only the phrase is searched for, and the 'domain:au' limit means that only pages with '.au' (for Australia) in their URL will be found. The result is a very useful search.

The search result displays the following URL in the 'Location:' box:

http://www.altavista.com/sites/search/web?q=%22telecommunications+interception%22+and+domain%3Aau&kl=XX&r=&d2=0&d0=&d1=&nbq=10&pg=aq&search=Search

You copy this URL and make a search link with it from your page, using something like 'Search Alta Vista for Australian material on telecommunications interception'.

2.3.4. Choose another search engine or index

Repeat the above exercise for another search engine / index on the web which you have found to be useful. You can find various search engines at Search Engine Watch's Major Search Engines [16] list, or in World Law >> Search Engines [17].

For example, on Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com/), if I go to Yahoo's index category 'Government:Law:Countries:Australia' and select the option 'Search only in Australia' and execute the search 'constitution', I can create a self-updating index from my page ('Yahoo on the Australian constitution') of whatever Yahoo indexes as being about constitutional issues in Australia.

2.3.5. The value of all this - automated links and stored searches

This isn't rocket science when it comes to web page development, but if what you are interested in is useful legal content, and embodying expertise in your pages so as to create a legal resource valuable to yourself as well as to others, search links are one of the most powerful tools you can use, and numerous links to sections of Acts and to cases make your pages interactive legal tools for interpretation.

2.4. Using your own templates

Before you move to putting your own pages up on the web 'live', create a new page called 'template.htm'. It should only contain those elements you would like to repeat each page of your project, such as the title of the project with a link back to its front page, an e-mail link to you, or a link to the home page for this subject.

You can open this page and save it by a different name each time you wish to create a new page for your project, and the whole project will then have a consistent 'look and feel'.

2.5. Simple images

Without going overboard, you can dress up your pages by good use of some graphical elements.

See Inline Images [18] (Beginner's Guide to HTML) for the basic concepts of embedding images in your pages.

2.5.1. Using 'cut and paste' with Netscape Composer

One of the simplest methods is just to use the Netscape Composer 'cut and paste' technique (as used above with the SINO search form), to copy public domain images from other internet sites and paste them into the appropriate locations on your own web pages.

2.5.2. Using the 'Insert Image' icon

Alternatively, where you have found a graphic that you would like to use (and are entitled to use under copyright law), you can include it as an image in your page (an 'inline image').

For example, if you know that the small AustLII icon is located at http://www.austlii.edu.au/images/tiny-austlii.gif you can embed that image in your page (an inline image) without even making a copy of it onto Sandpit. Select the 'Insert Image' icon

, and in the 'Format | Image' window displayed, paste the address of the image into the 'Image file name' box. It is a good idea to also specify a name for the image (e.g. 'AustLII logo'), to support non-graphical browsers. You can also select how the image is to be aligned with surrounding text.

Note that if the box that says 'copy image to the document's location' is checked, a copy of the image will automatically be downloaded to Sandpit, and it will be used by your page in future.

2.5.3. Sources of graphic elements

Here are some web locations of basic graphical elements:

Shockzone [19] - and other linked sites such as Art Today.

2.6. Editing source files

You may need to edit your HTML in ways that are not conveniently done simply by using Netscape Composer.

Set the 'External Editor' default in [Editor Preferences | General | External Editor] to a text editor (preferable) or to your word processor (e.g. Microsoft Word). Use [View | Document Source] to open your page in Microsoft Word or other word processor. Make a couple of changes. Then save the file - remember, save the file as 'Text only'!

Now open the changed page in the browser to check that the changes work.

2.7 Tables

See Tables [20] ((Beginner's Guide to HTML) for information about use of tables.

[14] http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/

[15] http://www.austlii.edu.au/links/215.html

[16] http://searchenginewatch.com/links/Major_Search_Engines/The_Major_Search_Engines/index.html

[17] http://www.austlii.edu.au/links/271.html

[18] http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimerAll.html#I

[19] http://www.theshockzone.com/

[20] http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimerAll.html#TA

Previous Next Title Page