The Indiana Law Blog has some detailed analysis about what has changed with the new Indiana Code website provided by the Indiana General Assembly. It also includes mention of my less refined bellyaching on Twitter.
Friday Lafayette attorney Doug Masson had these tweets:
LSA’s new website for the Indiana Code is incredibly unwieldy and a downgrade from what was available before.
Not to put too fine a point on it, the new Indiana Code website stinks out loud.
Navigation through the Code exclusively through drop down menus. Displayed only in framed PDFs with limited scrolling.
I agree with the ILB’s analysis that the new site might work for occasional use but is a significant step backward for new users and heavy users alike. It’s too much of a learning curve for new users. It’s too slow and too frustrating for heavy users.
I seem to have it in my head from somewhere that the new design elements, in particular the heavy use of PDFs instead of html, are a response to some sort of security concerns. But, if I ever knew what they were, I can’t begin to articulate what those security concerns may have been. (I know back in my LSA days, there was concern that someone might counterfeit a bill and misrepresent the language in the actual bill somehow. I think bar codes or maybe watermarks on the original versions were an effort to counter that anticipated threat.) Again, this is all very vague, but I’m offering the dim memory as I struggle to figure out what this redesign was intended to fix at such a loss in functionality.
But, yeah, at the moment — stinks out loud.
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