Site Information
Javascript and Cookies
Sidebar
Print Options
Background Colors
Searching
Browser Compatibility
Accessibility
Javascript and Cookies
This site uses javascript to provide a number of enhancements. These include:
drop-down menus on home and article pages
expandable site map
variable sidebar on home and article pages
print options
choice of background colors (albeit a limited range at present)
highlighting of search results
minor improvement of translation facility
A number of the above require settings to be preserved throughout a browsing session. On this site this is accomplished by using session cookies. This type of cookie is automatically destroyed when the browser is closed so settings will not be "remembered" if the site is revisited at some subsequent date. We do not set any persistent cookies.
For users who do not wish to enable javascript and/or session cookies, all the articles on the site are available through the site map. In the absence of javascript the entire tree is expanded.
Sidebar
The contents of the sidebar can be changed by accessing the drop-down menu at the top of each page and can be subsequently
hidden if desired (except on the home page). The variable sidebar is not available if javascript or session cookies have been disabled.
Print Options
The "Print" button enables javascript users to choose whether images in an article should be printed or not. Use your browser's
Print function to actually print articles. For javascript disabled browsers the default is to include images, while for javascript enabled
browsers it is to print text only. In both cases a print stylesheet ensures a suitable format for output to paper.
Background Colors
There are no alternative stylsheets for the site but we do offer a limited range of background colors which we consider
compatible with the predominant theme (green).
Searching
Four searching modes are provided:
Context search. This is the default method. A maximum of five search terms are allowed (comprising not more than 128 characters in total, including spaces). Each term must be separated by a space from following terms and can consist of a word or a phrase (phrases must be enclosed in double quotes). A match is recorded when all the search terms are found in the same paragraph. This is particularly useful for this site where many of the paragraphs are quite long and topic focused. There may be several matched paragraphs in a given document and extracts are provided from each. Documents referenced will have the matched paragraphs highlighted if javascript is enabled. Although many "common words" are discarded there is an upper limit to the number of matches permitted to guard against spurious searching for trivial expressions. Also, to avoid abuse, in words only English alphanumeric characters and, optionally, hyphens are permitted; within phrases, periods, commas, colons, apostrophes, and hyphens are allowed in addition to alphanumeric characters. The search algorithm employed seeks to match the singular and plural of input words as well as alternative tenses. For some shorter words this is not possible, but the majority that have relevance on this site will match singular, plural and regular past tense. It should be pointed out that this method only examines the text of articles: article titles, tables, bullet points, footnotes, etc. are ignored.
Name search. This is somewhat of a misnomer – the method can be used to search for any phrase. In summary the input for this mode is: a phrase not more than 128 characters long (not enclosed in double quotes), comprising alphanumeric characters and, optionally, hyphens, commas, periods, colons, apostrophes, and quotes, the latter having no special meaning. Unlike the Context search, matches are sought everywhere within the document, with the exception of the document title. The algorithm is simply an exact match of the input phrase. Matches are returned as a date ordered list of documents. Documents accessed from the list will have matched elements highlighted if javascript is enabled. This can have some curious effects. In some cases entire columns of tables may be highlighted.
Frequency search. As the name implies this method counts the number of times the search terms are matched in returned documents. The rules regarding allowed input are identical to those for the Context method. A list of matched documents (documents in which each term is matched at least once) is returned, ordered by "total" matches. There are no extracts nor highlighting in the documents themselves. The matching of words is similar to that employed in method 1.
Title search.Use this specifically to find a particular document. The rules governing input are exactly the same as for method 1. A match is recorded if any of the search terms occur in a document title. An unordered list of matching documents is returned.
Browser Compatibility
This site has been tested on Explorer 6 and 7, Firefox 1.5, Opera 9.01, Netscape 6.2 and 7 on the Windows platform. Hopefully there will be no problems on other platforms, but no provision has been made for running in older browser versions, or browsers not supporting stylesheets. We have endeavoured to use cross-browser code which should be recognised by all modern browsers, but there will undoubtedly be differences in rendering between browsers other than those mentioned.
Accessibility
All pages on the site scale-up satisfactorily using the text-size or zoom buttons of the browsers mentioned above except that Netscape 6 enlarges text only – not the containing boxes. Enlargement may, however, reduce the clarity of some images and diagrams.
