Header with menu and fotter will appear on every aol page.
From the Home page you can search and browse all legislation. The simplest way to search is to enter one or more search terms (your search query) in the main search box.
Searches entered in the main search box are text searches, that is, they search both descriptive information and the content of legislation items.
The Search button activates your search. Pressing the Enter key - on the keyboard - after the search terms are entered also activates your search. The Clear button clears your search terms.
Search Options
The drop down box to the right of the search input box changes how the terms entered are combined (to form your query).
The options are:
- all of these words
- any of these words
- this exact phrase
- this search expression
The table below demonstrates how each option will affect the query: tax contributions and exceptions
| Search option | Resulting search |
|---|
| all of these words | "tax" AND "contributions" AND "and" AND "exceptions" |
| any of these words | "tax" OR "contributions" OR "and" OR "exceptions" |
| this exact phrase | "tax contributions AND exceptions" |
| this search expression | "tax contributions" AND "exceptions" |
Refer to Search Operators for more detail on how to enter search terms.
For more advanced searches, use the Search page.
The radio buttons under the search input box change which types of legislation your query will search for.
The options are:
- Current Acts and Subsidiary Legislation:
-
Searches ALL Legislation.
- Current Acts:
-
Searches Acts currently in force and Acts with a known inforce date.
- Current Subsidiary Legislation:
-
Searches Subsidiary Legislation currently in force and Subsidiary Legislation with a known inforce date.
- Cap. or Act No.: (ONLY)
-
Searches within the specified Act/Chapter and any SLs made under those Acts.
- Subsidiary Legislation No. (if any): (ONLY)
-
Searches within the specified Subsidiary Legislation.
- Cap. or Act No. AND Subsidiary Legislation No.:
-
Searches within the Subsidiary Legislation with the given number which was made under the Act/Chapter with the number in the 'Cap. or Act No.' field.
Browse Options
There are 2 ways of browsing from the home page; by clicking on one of the links in the browse section or by entering a Chapter/Act
and clicking search (see the image below).
When browsing using the available links you may change the set of legislation to browse by selecting one of the items from the drop down list in the browse section.
- Current Acts
- Acts that are in force and those coming into force on a known date.
- Current Subsidiary Legislation
- Subsidiary Legislation which is in force and those coming into force on a known date.
- Act Supplements (as published in Gazette)
- Acts as published in the Act supplement of the Gazette.
- Subsidiary Legislation (as published in Gazette)
- Subsidiary Legislation as published in the Subsidiary Legislation supplement of the Gazette.
The "Interpretation Act" link in the browse section is a special link and will take you directly to the whole view of the current Interpretation Act, regardless of your selection in the drop down box.
To browse by Act or Chapter number first select the 'Browse' radio option, then enter the appropriate information into the relevant box.
Act numbers can be entered as just a single number or of the form '[number]-[year]' or Act [number] of [year]'.
Unlike the browse pages Chapter/Act browsing, if the number you enter matches no current legislation you will be presented with the summary screen with no results.
The Page Banner located at the very top of the page - including all other pages in the system, apart from the print friendly pages - identifies the system. It also provides links to information about the system and navigation throughout the system as follows:
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The system version in the top left corner.
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links to general links regarding the site as follows:
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About - a link to a page containing general information about the system.
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Contact Info - a link to a page containing contact details for personnel regarding the system.
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Feedback - a feedback page where user feedback can be sent to the system's administrators.
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Site Map - a page that lists the system's pages.
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Help - a page containing help information for using the system.
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External Search - a Singapore Government online search facility with the option to specify the search domain from a drop-down list as follows:
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A tabbed menu with clickable labels for accessing the system as follows:
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Home
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Search
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Results
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My Preferences
Search operators are used when the 'using' modifier is set to "this search expression" on the home page and when the "Search expression" input is used on the Search Page.
You may use search operators to build highly specific search expressions.
These operators negate the need to key in words such as AND, OR and NOT. If these words are keyed in, they are treated as part of the search query, so that the search 'tax or taxation' will generate a results list of records containing the words 'tax' and 'or' and 'taxation'.
Note: Spacing around search operators is generally optional, so that
- Example: tax|taxation|money is the same query as tax | taxation | money
Search terms are not case sensitive - you may use UPPER or lower case characters without affecting results.
- Example: Tax Evasion
will have the same results as
tax evasion
The first form is quicker to type. The second form is (probably) easier to read.
However, four operators must be closed up without a space. See the following table of Search Operators.
Search Operators
Operator | Description | Operation | Spacing |
Space | | AND | AND is the default operator if no other operators are present. |
| | vertical bar | OR | |
, | Comma | OR | No spacing before or after operator, e.g. tax,taxation,money |
- | Hyphen | NOT | No spacing after operator, e.g. Governor -general |
(...) | parentheses | Group together | |
Field: e.g. Title, Year, Heading | Capitalised first character of the field and field followed by a colon | Fielded search | No spacing after operator, e.g. Title:australia |
>> | double greater than | Range search | |
~ | Tilde | Stem | No spacing before operator, e.g. part~ |
# | Hash | Single character wild card | |
? | Question mark | Multiple character wild card | |
"..." | double quotes | Phrase | |
Below is a description of each search operator.
- space - AND
Search for document records containing both the term that precedes the space and the term that follows the space.
- Example: to find 'land AND house' use land house
- | - OR (vertical bar found as the upper case of the backslash)
Search for document records containing either the term that precedes the | operator or the term that follows the | operator.
- Example: to find 'house OR land' use house | land
The OR operator has higher precedence than the AND operator.
- Example: land | tax 2007 is the same search as (land | tax) 2007
- Example: land | tax 2006 | 2007 is the same search as (land | tax) (2006 | 2007)
You can over-ride this default order by using your own parentheses.
- , - OR (comma)
The comma operator is an alternative form of the | operator. It is typically used to combine terms in the same field.
- Example: Title:fraction,friction
The comma operator must not have spaces around it.
- - — NOT (hyphen)
Search for document records containing the term that precedes the - operator but not the term that follows the - operator.
- Example: to find 'governor NOT general' use governor -general
The - operator must immediately precede the negated term, i.e. there is a space before the operator and no blank space between the operator and the negated term.
- (...) - Grouping (parentheses)
Parentheses are used to group search expressions so that they are evaluated in your preferred order.
- Example: to give AND a higher precedence than OR,
'Australia AND New Zealand, OR Australasia' use
(Australia "New Zealand") | Australasia
- Field: - (field-name followed by colon)
Search for document records containing a term in a specific location, such as in its title.
- Example: to find 'Federation' in the title use Title:federation
The Field: operator must immediately precede the search term. In other words, field names must not be followed by a space. Field names are case sensitive (while search terms are not).
-
Title:federation is correct; title:federation is not correct.
- >> - Range (double greater than)
Search for document records containing the date within a range from the term that precedes the >> operator to the term that follows the >> operator.
- Example: to find 'years from 2001 to 2009' use Year:2001>>2009
Note: Take care to parenthesise ranges when used with other terms.
- Example: Search for records containing a range within a field. For example to find, 'Stables' from '1983 to 1991': use Stables (Year:1983>>1991)
- ~ - Stemming (tilde found as the upper case of the key to the left of number 1)
Searche for document records with a word that contains the letters preceding the tilde
- Example: technolog~ matches technological, technology and technologies.
In another way, the ~ operator searches for document records containing a word in both its singular and plural forms, such as 'act' or 'acts'. The ~ stem operator will
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pluralise a singular word
-
singularise a plural word
-
and match both forms.
- Example: to find 'party' or 'parties', use
party~
or
parties~
Note: The stemming operator '~' is similar to the wild card operator '?'. The difference is that stemming is based on an algorithm (that tries to work out singular and plural) where the wildcard will find all words that have the characters before it in common.
- Example: person~ will find person and persons instances only
- Example: person? will find person, persons, personnel, personality and all other words which start with 'person'.
See also wildcard explanation below.
- # - Wild card (hash) - Single Character
Search for document records containing words that are spelled with a variable character, such 'organize' or 'organise'. The # wild card matches any single character.
- Example: to find 'organize' or 'organise', use organi#e
Which matches document records containing organize, organise
- ? - Wild card (question mark) - Multiple Characters
Search for document records containing only parts of the search term, such as words that start with the search term. A ? wild card matches any text that could complete the term (including no additional text).
- Example: to find words starting with 'par', use par? which matches document records containing par, part, party, parliament, etc.
- Example: to find words starting with 'par' and ending in 'y', use par?y which matches document records containing party, particularly, parliamentary, etc.
Note: you must confine ? wild card searches to terms that have at least three characters. Wild card searches on shorter terms are likely to find more matching document records and take longer than you might expect because of the number of possibilities that need to be examined.
- " ... " - Phrase (double quotes)
Search for document records containing an exact phrase. Phrases cannot include the '>' or '<' characters.
- Example: to find the sequence of words 'fiscal policy', use "fiscal policy"
The Search page provides a form for creating a more advanced search than is possible on the home page. The form contains the following areas:
- Legislation Type selection
- Search inputs
- Search expression field
- Ordering selection
The Clear button at the bottom of the page clears your search terms and sets the legislation Type selections back to their default values.
Search page with inForce date options.
Legislation Type selection
A search may be constrained to a particular act status by making a selection from the 'Search' check box list as follows:
- Unrevised Acts - Acts that have not yet been revised.
- Revised Editions of Acts - Acts that have been revised (now Chapters).
- Acts Supplements (as published in Gazette) - Acts as they appear in the Gazette.
- Unrevised Subsidiary Legislation - Subsidiary Legislation that have not yet been revised.
- Revised Editions of Subsidiary Legislation - Subsidiary Legislation that have been revised.
- Subsidiary Legislation (as published in Gazette) - Subsidiary Legislation as they appear in the Gazette.
Search inputs
Three rows of select and input boxes let you search for your search terms in specific document fields.
Using the add row (
) button you can add more input rows to the search.
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The first box in each row (except for the first) lets you choose how to combine the search segments together.
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The second box in each row allows you to enter search terms.
- Note: Search operators should not to be used in these search fields. However they can be used in the 'Search expression' field.
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The third select box in each row offers a list of available fields , such as Content, Titles, Headings, Schedules, etc.
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The fourth select box in each row offers a list of search term combinations that relate to the text you have entered in the first box. These are: all of these words, any of these words, this exact phrase, and without these words.
Search expression field
The Search expression field underneath the search input boxes has the same functionality as the Home page search option of 'this search expression' in that it takes a query with operators.
For example, 'tax | taxation | taxonomy' in a search field would translate to '"tax" AND "|" AND "taxation" AND "|" AND "taxonomy"' whereas in the search expression field it would translate into '"tax" OR "taxation" OR "taxonomy"'.
Ordering selection
There are 5 sorting options to choose from, which are:
- Relevance: This is a special way of sorting results base on the search terms you entered.
- Title (A-Z): This sort option sorts the results by the document title (Alphabetically ascending) and groups all sections in that document together.
- Title (Z-A): This sort option sorts the results by the document title (Alphabetically descending) and groups all sections in that document together.
- Date (Newest First): This sort option sorts the results by their relevant date. Published date for gazetted records, or In Force date for all other records.
- Date (Oldest First): This sort option sorts the results by their relevant date. Published date for gazetted records, or In Force date for all other records.
The Search Results screen contains three panes:
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The top pane contains tools to edit the search and reorder the results.
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The right-hand pane holds the list of search results.
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The left-hand pane offers ways to refine your search.
Summary Results. Showing the 3 sections described above.
The Search Results top pane comprises:
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To the left:
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Your query which cannot be edited directly from this screen, followed by a Refine button which takes you back to the search screen to edit your query;
- Order by selector, where the default is 'Relevance'.
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The Order by may be changed by selecting one of the other options in the drop down list and clicking on Re-Order.
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A summary of how many sections have matched your query and which items you are currently looking at.
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To the right:
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A print friendly icon (
) which can be used to display a printer friendly view of your results;
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A navigation bar to go to the next, previous, first and last pages of results.
The Search Results right-hand pane comprises:
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A page of search results. Each document record is preceded by an icon signifying the type as follows:
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Act - (
); and
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SL - (
).
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Each document record is summarised by:
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Its title, which is a hyperlink to the full display of the document record. Clicking on the hyperlink takes you to the Document View of the whole dodument;
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The section heading. Clicking on the hyperlink takes you to the Document View of the section only;
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A snippet taken from within the document record that surrounds your highlighted search terms and provides contextual information which assists you in determining whether this record is of interest to you.
- Note: the number of words surrounding the search term in the snippet can be set in the My Preferences tab.
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Hit count for the secition is show in square brackets at the end of the section heading.
If Title sorting is selected then there will also be a hit count for the entire document shown in square brackets at the end of the document title.
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Finally the navigation bar is reproduced at the bottom of the page for accessing when at the bottom of the page.
The left-hand pane of the Search Results screen contains Browse By categories. These categories reveal how your search result document records are grouped according to different criteria.
Each Browse By link acts to narrow your search results. The number of records in each link is shown alongside it in brackets.
Clicking on a link will automatically perform the search. A new set of results, narrowed by the selection you have made, will be displayed along with a new set of Browse By options.
Example:
On the Search screen, enter "market trading" in the first search box.
Click 'deselect all'.
Select 'Unrevised Acts' and 'Revised Editions of Acts'.
Click Search
On the Search Results screen, you will see a browse by option for 'Years'
Click '2000s'
The search results will reflect only those document records with a date between 2000 and 2099 and will be a smaller set of records.
There will also be a sub pane for narrowing your seaches by a particular year.
The Document View screen contains two panes:
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The right-hand pane, which contains results navigation and the document content.
-
The ToC pane, which allows navigation within the legislation.
Example legislation view with hit highlighting.
The right pane is comprised of
4
different sections:
-
At the top:
The options displayed will differ depending on the type of document being viewed.
For an Act-
Related Subsidiary Legislation - A link to a list of Subsidiary Legislation made under this Act (only present if the Act has Subsidiary Legislation made under it)
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Legislative History - link to the Legislative History of the Act
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Hide/Show Hits - Show or hide the hits in the document (only available if there are any hits in the document you are viewing)
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Amendment Annotation On/Off - Show or hide the documents amendment annotation.
For a Subsidiary Legislation-
Authorising Act - Link to the parent Act of this Subsidiary Legislation
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Legislative History - link to the Legislative History of the Subsidiary Legislation
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Hide/Show Hits - Show or hide the hits in the document (only available if there are any hits in the document you are viewing)
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Amendment Annotation On/Off - Show or hide the documents amendment annotation.
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Second section:
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A navigation bar to go to the first and last hits on the page.
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A navigation bar to go to the next and previous result.
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A print friendly icon () which can be used to display a printer friendly view of your results
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Third section:
A document without any amendments/revisions-
A box containing the text 'No History for selected instrument'.
A document with amendments/revisions
A box containing the following:-
Text stating when the search was performed and the dates used for the search.
-
History open/close button at the bottom of the box which opens/expands (or closes/collapses) the bix to display/hide the following:
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A list of the dates which the versions of the document came into force
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A graphical depiction of the types of amendments made to the document over a time line (in line with the document's in force date) that are also clickable links to documents
as follows
- a Formal Consolidation.
- a Formal Consolidation that is currently displayed.
- an Informal Consolidation.
- an Informal Consolidation that is currently displayed.
- an Informal Consolidation incorporating Retrospective Amendment as latest amendment.
- an Informal Consolidation incorporating Retrospective Amendment as latest amendment that is currently displayed.
- hovering the mouse pointer over this icon (if visible) scrolls the timeline to the left, i.e. back in time.
- hovering the mouse pointer over this icon (if visible) scrolls the timeline to the right, i.e. forward in time.
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A list of the documents which amended the current document (in line with the document's in force date)
-
Fourth (Main) section:
This section contains the text of the document you are viewing (either the whole document, a single part, a single provision or multiple provisions)
The text may contain links to other sections within the document or links to other legislation documents.
The ToC pane contains links to all the parts/provisions of the current document, as well as 3 buttons ('Get Provisions', 'Reset' and 'Whole Document')
Each provision has a check box to the left of it so that they can be selected and all selected provisions can be displayed at once.
Clicking on any Part in the ToC will display all provisions under that part.
Clicking on any provision will do the same as clicking on its parent part but set the focus to the provision clicked.
-
The buttons act as follows:
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Get Provisions - When clicked it will fetch all the selected provisions and display them all together
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Reset - Return to the original provision which was matched by the search; and
-
Whole Document - Display the entire document in the right panel.
All search terms that caused the document record to be retrieved will be highlighted in the main panel.
However, if the document record was retrieved through search terms that were found only in metadata which is not displayed then no highlighing will appear.
-
clicking a highlighted term's >> link will focus the next highlighted hit
-
clicking a highlighted term's << link will focus the previous highlighted hit.
Singapore Statutes Online Browse Screen.
The Browse page provides a simple way of finding legislation by its Title or its Year of publication. The form contains the following areas:
- Go to Cap. or Act No.:
This allows quick acccess to an Act or Chapter by entering its number in the text input box and clicking the Go button.
- Browse Current Acts and Subsidiary Legislation Panel:
Browse current Acts and Subsidiary Legislation panel by Title or Subject. This sections allows you to browse all Acts and Subsidiary Legislation by selecting the first letter of the title or subject in the respective list. A drop down box allows you to select your desired status of the Acts and Subsidiary Legislation to be browsed. In addition to the letters there are 5 links to specific legislation types (Constitutional documents, The Interpretation Act, Private Acts, English Acts and Imperial Acts).
- Browse Legislation (as published in Gazette) Panel:
There is a list of Years for browsing Acts and Subsidiary Legislation by the year they were published.
There are 5 different Browse Results pages that each provide a different way of accessing the documents:
Singapore Statutes Online Browse Titles.
The browse results view displays all documents with a title starting with the selected letter and are of a certain status and type.
The infomation is as follows (from top to bottom):
-
A description of the type of documents you are browsing and a print friendly link to the right
-
A list of letter links to change the Title letter you are browsing, with the current letter highlighted
-
Links to the following document types 'Constitutional Documents', "Interpretation Act', 'Private Acts', 'English Acts', and 'Imperial Acts'
-
Column headings 'Short Title', 'Number', 'Amend', and 'SLs'
- Short Title - Document title
- Number - Unique number of the document
- Amend - RSS link for notification of amendments
- SLs - Link to related Subsidiary Legislation (if there is any)
-
List of documents which match the browse criteria.
Singapore Statutes Online Browse Subjects.
The browse results view displays a tree list of all the subjects starting with the selected lettr.
Each leaf node - depicted by the (
) icon - of the tree represents a single document and its accompanying title is a link to the document.
The infomation on the page is as follows (from top to bottom):
-
A description of type of documents you are browsing
-
A list of letter links to change the Title letter you are browsing, with the current letter highlighted and a print friendly link to the right
-
Expand All and Collapse All buttons
-
The Subject Tree.
- Root node - The Letter you are browsing
- First Level items - Major subjects (All will start with root letter). Major subject nodes open to a second level.
- Second Level items - Either links to document view that match the major subject or minor subject nodes (may start with any level). Minor subject nodes open to a third level.
- Third Level - Links to document view that match major and minor subject
-
Expand All and Collapse All buttons.
The browse results view displays all documents that are categorised by the selected type.
The infomation on the page is as follows (from top to bottom):
-
A description of type of documents you are browsing and a print friendly link to the right
-
A list of letter links to change the Title letter you are browsing, with the current letter highlighted
-
Links to the following items 'Constitutional Documents', "Interpretation Act', 'Private Acts', 'English Acts', and 'Imperial Acts'
-
Column headings 'Short Title', 'Number', 'Amend', and 'SLs'
- Short Title - Document title
- Number - Unique number of the ducument
- Amend - RSS link to be notified of amendments
- SLs - Link to related Subsidiary Legislation (if there is any)
-
List of documents which match the browse criteria.
Singapore Statutes Online Browse Years.
The browse results view displays all documents that were published in a certain year.
The infomation on the page is as follows (from top to bottom):
-
A description of type of documents you are browsing and a print friendly link to the right
-
A list of year links to change the year you are browsing, with the current displayed year highlighted
-
Column headings 'Short Title', 'Number'
- Short Title - Document title
- Number - Unique number of the ducument
-
List of documents that match the browse criteria.
Singapore Statutes Online Browse Related Subsidiary Legislation.
The browse results view displays all Subsidiary Legislation made under a particular Act.
The infomation on the page is as follows (from top to bottom):
-
A description of type of documents you are browsing and a print friendly link to the right
-
A link to the document view of the parent Act
-
A link to the Legislation view of the parent Act.
-
A link back to the browse screen which you came from
-
Column headings 'Short Title', 'Number', 'Amend', and 'SLs'
- Short Title - Document title
- Number - Unique number of the ducument
- Amend - RSS link to be notified of amendments
- SLs - Link to related Subsidiary Legislation (if there is any)
-
List of Subsidiary Legislation documents that are related to the Act.
For all of the browse results pages except the subject results the order of the result list is indicated by an icon immediately after the column heading as follows
The infomation on the page is as follows (from top to bottom):
- not sorted by the column.
- sorted by this column in ascending order.
- sorted by this column in descending order.
You can always use your web browser's 'File/Print...' (Ctrl-P) to print the current web page. However, the page content will be embellished with page banners, selection tabs, icons, etc.
If you want a printer friendly version, you can click on the print icon () which will redirect you to a printer friendly version of your results. The icon appears at the top right (Under the banner) of the search results and the full legislation view pages.
After clicking on the print icon you can use the web browser's 'File/Print...' (Ctrl-P) to print this page.
You may normally want to limit the number of results per page or how much text per result is displayed on the summary screen to reduce the response times of your searches. The My Preferences tab lets you configure your own search defaults. Once set, your defaults remain in force until you decide to change them, by the selections in My Preferences.
There are five parts to configuring your personal profile:
- Results per page
-
Configure the default maximum number of items on a Search Results screen.
- Hits in context
-
The first option lets you select the maximum number of hits to display per record on the summary screen.
-
Configure the number of words to be displayed in summary snippets on either side of the hit terms (search terms) on the Search Results screen.
-
Cannot be temporarily over-ridden on search screens.
For more help or assistance, please email agc_vldb@agc.gov.sg
