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Welcome to the AustLII Interactive Tutorial

Welcome to this interactive tutorial, designed to help new users learn how to use the AustLII web site effectively. This first screen is to help you orientate yourself and to learn how to use your browser.

Under Construction: These pages are still under construction. Only a few lessons are currently online.

To the right of this screen should be a scrollbar. This is a (typically grey) button that you can "slide" up and down to read text that doesn't fit entirely on the page (or "window") that you are currently reading. To use the scrollbar, move the mouse pointer over the scrollbar button, click (and hold) the left mouse button down, and drag the scrollbar up or down.

Your browser should contain 2 or 3 panels or "frames":

1. Lesson Plan: If you see the text Lesson Plan, then moving your mouse pointer to it and clicking once will load the lesson plan. You can use this to skip ahead or jump back to a previous lesson.

2. Tutorial: The lesson text will appears here when you begin a lesson. It will contain an outline of the current lesson, and then proceed to the instructional tutorial.

3. Practice Area: The other half of your screen contains the practice area. Right now it should be showing the AustLII Home Page (click here if it is not). The lesson text in the other frame will give you instructions, which you should perform in the practice area.

In this way, you will be able to read the instructions and perform the tasks at the same time. You might want to maximise your browsers window. You can do this (usually) by pressing the small button at the very top right of the browser (it's a large square in Windows95, WindowsNT or OS/2. It's an up arrow in Windows 3.1. It's a small square inside a larger one on a Macintosh).

You can also customise the viewing area. Note the lines seperating the two frames. If you move your mouse over to one, you can click (and hold) the mouse button down, and then drag the line left or right (or up or down) to change its size. Go ahead - try it now! (You know you want to!)

Now we are ready to begin. Our first lesson is called Using the Web. If you've never used Netscape or Internet Explorer (or whatever Web Browser you're using now) then move the mouse here and click the left mouse button once.

If you're familiar with the World Wide Web ("the Web" for short), then you might like to skip to Legal Research.