Better Justel EN

IMPORTANCE NOTICE: If you are using the Firefox extension, the first time you will surf to Justel website, a blue dot will appear on the icon of the extension. You must right-click on the extension icon and grant it permission to always run on www.ejustice.fgov.be. Otherwise, the extension will not work.

• On the search page, three buttons allow to easily select statutes, royal decrees or treaties as the nature of the act to be searched. The place on the page of the date of promulgation and the date of publication are swapped, because a search based on the date of promulgation is more common. By default, a search is based on the title of the act rather than its content to narrow down the results.
• On the results page, each link opens the act in a new window by default.
• The page on which each act is displayed is divided in three panes : the upper pane containing general information on the act; the left pane with a table of content; and the right pane displaying the content of the act. Each pane can be resized by hovering the mouse on the dividing line and dragging it.
• In the info pane, the icon of a disk allows to download and automatically name the consolidated version of the act in PDF. The link "Clear database" removes the act from the offline database. The link "Disable extension" shows the original text of the act, without the extension.
• The left pane displays the internal structure of the acte based on its headings (Title, Chapter, Section, etc.) and allows to jump immediately to the relevant part of the act by clicking on an article. The table of content can be fully collapsed or expanded with two different buttons.
• In the right pane, the hierarchical level of each heading is reflected by appropriate styling. The content of each article is also analysed. The text is indented to make appear more clearly the internal structure (§, 1°, a), hyphen, etc.). The number of each article is shown in bold. Subparagraphs (alénas) are also automatically numbered in the margin of the article.
• When text is selected within an article in the right page, a popup window appears and allows to highlight the text (in yellow, green, blue or red) or to underline it (in violet). To edit an existing highlight, click on it : the color of it can be changed by clicking on another color, or deleted by clicking on the white circle. A comment can also be inserted. The popup window can be closed by clicking elsewhere in the right pane. When a comment is added to highlighted text, this text is displayed in italic.
• Highlights are stored in the local storage of the browser and are restored the next time the same act is displayed. Saved highlights can be managed with the commands available in the popup window shown when clicking on the icon of the extension. They can be exported in JSON format and imported again by pasting the content of the JSON file in the relevant input box. A daily backup to Dropbox can also be set up (access is limited to the app folder in Dropbox, no access to the rest of the Dropbox is granted).
• Acts displayed are automatically stored in the browser local storage. The optional "Load stored acts immediately" setting opens a stored act without waiting for Justel, then checks for updates once per day in the background and reloads the online page only when a newer version exists. Stored acts can also be consulted offline: when no internet access is available, a user browsing to the ELI URL of a stored act will automatically be redirected to the offline version of it. The online or offline character of the text displayed is mentioned on top of the left pane. The original ELI URL can be copied from the info pane. The list of stored acts can also be consulted by clicking on the icon of the extension (they are listed in chronological order). Highlights are also displayed and are editable when in offline mode.
• Case law abstracts, downloaded from Juportal Crawaler database, are displayed under each article. Please note that these abstracts are in no way exhaustive, that important case law may be missing, that it may be misclassified or outdated and that it does not in any way replace a systematic research on Juportal and other databases. Never rely on this information, especially for professional use, without veryfing it personnally. Display of case law is experimental and is currently only open to beta testers.

The use of this browser extension is governed by the GNU General Public License. This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

Additionnally, the use of this browser extension is governed by Belgian law and any dispute pertaining to the validity, interpretation, performance or extinction of the license agreement, as well as more generally any dispute in connection with this browser extension, will be exclusively submitted to the courts having their seat in Nivelles (Belgium).

• For the time being, the extension only works with the French version of Justel, to the exclusion of the Dutch version.
• The HTML of some acts available on Justel is faulty and cannot therefore …