How to use your online code
Click the plus (+) or minus (-) symbols to expand or collapse the entries.
Basic Browsing
+ Browsing a code (click for video):
To browse an online code, click on the title that you want to view. To browse through the titles and chapters of the code, click on the plus (+) button to expand a selection. In most cases, chapters can be expanded as well to view individual sections. To collapse the entries, click on the minus (-) button. You may also browse titles and chapters by clicking on their respective links.
Clicking on the left and right arrows toward the top of the page allows you to read through the code chapter by chapter. Clicking on Home will send you to the home page of your code.
Bookmarks: Add a bookmark for the page you are viewing.
Change Text Size: Click to adjust font size for better readability.
Hide TOC: Hide the table of contents while browsing the code.
Print Doc: Print the chapter you are currently viewing.
+ Table of Contents (TOC) Frame
Collapsible TOC: Click on the plus/minus signs to expand or collapse the table of contents.
Frameless Version (Mobile Viewing): Essential for best viewing and quick navigation on iPads and smartphones, including iPhones, Android and BlackBerry phones. Complies with ADA requirements.
Older versions of the code: Select a date to view the code as it appeared at that point in time. Previous versions of the code can be compared to the most up-to-date version as well (click on the Compare link).
+ Searching a code (click for video):
Enter a search term in the space provided and click the Search button. This will return a list of the pages that match your request in order of relevancy. To view a document in the list, click on the link.
After you have opened a matching document, you can use the First Hit, Next Hit, and Prev Hit buttons on the top navigation bar to navigate from hit to hit. You can also use the Next Doc and Prev Doc buttons to move between documents that have hits in them. For PDF files, use the hit navigation buttons in the Adobe Reader toolbar instead.
+ Search options:
Advanced Search Options: Use boolean searching, refine the search with stemming (click for video), phonic searching, etc. (See Advanced Options under Advanced Search tab.)
Scope Searching: Restrict a search to specific titles or documents. (See Scope Search under Advanced Search tab). Not all codes provide scope searching.
+ Saving your search:
Click Save to My Searches to save the search terms and settings that you have entered in the search form. Saving a search with the same search terms as a previously saved search will overwrite it, even if the other settings are different.
Click My Searches to open a menu of saved searches. Click the name of the search to run it, or click delete to remove it. Your saved searches will last for three months unless you clear the cookies on your browser.
Saving and Printing Selections
Expand the table of contents by clicking on the plus (+) symbol. Click on the checkboxes beside the titles, chapters, or sections that you want to print or save. To deselect, click the checkbox again. You can select multiple titles, chapters and selections at once. Not all codes offer saving and printing options.
To print nonsequential sections or chapters of the code, expand the TOC and click on the checkboxes beside the selections you want to print.
When you have made your selection(s), click the Print Selections button, and a preview window will pop up. Click the Print Page button to print, or Change Selection to close the preview window and choose a different selection.
An alternate printing method is to navigate to a chapter that you want to print and click on the Print Doc link in the top right corner of the page. This will print the chapter that you are currently on.
+ Printing Color Images:
Printing Color Images: Color images will automatically print in color, provided that your printer has the capability. Colored text and highlighting (such as the OrdAlert tags) will not print in color unless colored text and backgrounds are enabled in the browser. Enabling colored texts and backgrounds is a little different for each browser.
Internet Explorer: Click on the Tools menu and select Internet Options. Click on the Advanced tab and scroll down until you find the Printing header. Select Print background colors and images, then click OK and the setting will be changed.
Mozilla Firefox: Click on the File menu and select Page Setup. There you will be able to check the option Print Background (colors and images).
To save a portion of the code, expand the TOC and click on the checkboxes beside the selections you want to save. Click on the Save as RTF button and a window will pop up giving you the option to save or open the file.
To display the title or chapter header and digest in the RTF, make sure that you have also selected the checkbox for that particular title and/or chapter. If you do not want to select the whole title and/or chapter, deselect those individual sections or chapters that you do not want.
The advantage of an RTF (Rich Text Format) file is its lightweight file type that can be opened in most word processors (MS Word, WordPerfect, etc.). The saved RTF file will display in a clean format that shows the name of the code, the code's currency information, and the page number of the material that you have chosen to save.
Recently Codified Material
Not all codes contain these features.
+ Caching/Reloading the frame
If you visit your code frequently, you might notice that recent updates have not appeared. This is probably due to caching. To speed up the time it takes to load a page, web browsers will store bits of the page in their memory. To make sure you're seeing the latest version of a chapter, right-click on it and choose Refresh from the menu (or This Frame > Reload Frame if you're using Firefox).
+ Ordinance Table
If you are not sure whether an ordinance has been codified, the easiest way to check is to use the Ordinance Table. If an ordinance has been codified, the disposition(s) will have hyperlinks to the chapters in the code where the ordinance is codified.
+ OrdSearch
Click on an underlined ordinance in the Ordinance Table to find all sections where the ordinance is codified.
+ Table of Contents
The Table of Contents frame (the left frame) is built "on-the-fly" so it should automatically reflect the latest changes to the code. Pages that are linked from the table of contents may still be affected by cookies, so you might have to refresh a page if you don't see new provisions.
+ CodeTrak
Highlighting recently updated sections with revised text.
+ OrdAlert
Highlighting sections amended by ordinances not codified yet. Affected sections link to the new ordinance.