Using the Web Site
 Welcome
to the web site of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia.
The purpose of this site is to provide access to the elected Members
of the Legislative Assembly, to the many public documents and proceedings
from current and previous sessions of the Assembly, and to a comprehensive
resource presenting information about the Legislative Assembly itself.
The site is comprised of many thousands of pages and has therefore
been designed with extensive navigation features to assist you in
finding specific information. Included here is information on how
to use the site navigation features to help you find what you need.
There are also some helpful hints on how to go about conducting
a successful search.
Learning about the British Columbia Parliament Buildings and Legislative
Assembly
It's easy to find information about the Legislature. On this
site, you can visit:
- the "Discover Your Legislature" link on the menu
bar on the left of this screen. It opens a Flash presentation
on the People, Place, Purpose of the Legislature.
- the "Public Education and Outreach" link on the
menu at the left of this screen. This page provides a choice
of several information topics, including brochures.
Navigation
The site provides two main ways to navigate:
- Two drop-down menu navigation bars:
- the top menu provides access to information relating to
the entire site
- the left menu provides access to the content of the web
site by category.
The top navigation bar provides pop down menus when you move
your mouse over a button. The left navigation bar exposes sub
menus when an button is clicked.
- The powerful "Search" tool provided at the top right
of the screen provides the second way to access content. Use
our Searching Successfully
section below to learn how to use the power of the site search
engine to its full advantage.
In Addition:
You can always use the Coat of Arms Logo in the top left corner
to return to the home page!
The "Site Map" link in the white navigation bar along
the top of the window will provide an easy to read table of contents
for the whole site.
Navigating the Site
The Navigation Bars:
The top navigation bar automatically senses your mouse over each
button and will pop down the sub-menu items. For example, if you
move your mouse over the "What's New" button on the
topnavigation menu, the sub-menu items "Legislature Today"
and "Bills Passed" will pop down. The left navigation
bar will pop down the sub-menu items when you click on a button.
Both of the navigation bars are present on the main pages of the
site, allowing you to access other sections or lower pages wherever
you are.
The navigation bars require a Javascript enabled browser. To
take advantage of this feature, you must either enable javascripting
in your browser, or download a newer version of your browser that
supports Javascript.
Discover Your Legislature - People, Place, Purpose
Available at any time through the left side navigation bar, you
can visit this rich-media resource and learn more about the People,
Place, Purpose of the British Columbia Legislative Assembly. You
must have the Flash player installed to enjoy this part of the
site.
How to download Flash player:
Go to the Macromedia
Download Center and download Flash. Macromedia provides a
simple set of instructions on how to install the player.
Searching Successfully
When you use the search tool, it will return a list of all the
pages it finds relating to your query. It may return hundreds of
pages, or it may return only a few. How many pages it returns not
only depends on the availability of the information you requested,
but on how you phrase your search. The better a search query is
phrased, the more likely you will be to find the information you
are looking for without having to wade through many irrelevant results.
Learning to successfully use the Search function on the web site
is easy. It is important to understand a little about how the search
works before you move into specifics on using the search.
However powerful the search tool is, it cannot guess your meaning.
For example, if you typed in species protection, you might get pages
on that topic, but you may also get pages on flower species, species
integration, fire protection, protection of children, environmental
protection, and so on. Sometimes there are so many irrelevant pages
returned that it is either impossible or too time consuming to sort
through them all to find the page you were actually looking for.
To help you to convey your meaning to the search tool, so that
you find what you need and get fewer erroneous results, please refer
to our Search
Tips page.
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