As we mentioned here, the California courts have been in the process of developing a new website for some time. That site was launched on February 28 and can be found at www.courts.ca.gov. We’ve taken the new website’s Guided Tour and, based on our preliminary review, we think the new site is user friendly and a substantial improvement over the former site: www.courtinfo.ca.gov. We especially like the Supreme Court’s page and the “Legal Community” link on the home page, which allows attorneys and other legal professionals to quickly access shortcuts to the information they need. If you have comments about the site and how to make it better, send them to websitefeedback@jud.ca.gov.
The new website has many improvements, not the least of which is a white background.
While I reserve final judgment following further usage, my preliminary conclusion is that it was a mistake to use frames to contain dockets, rules and opinions. Those items should all open to fill a full screen, rather than being embedded into a smaller portion of a screen. The result is that more scrolling is required to read the embedded material and it is more difficult to find and save a direct link to the item. An awkward solution for the user is to right-click on the item and open it into a browser tab of its own. But, hopefully, a future upgrade will jettison the frames.