Instructions for use of electronic book

     The materials in this electronic book are grouped in libraries rather than in chapters, enabling both teacher and student to custom design study of the materials. The libraries are: Commentary, Problems, Cases, Statutes and Regulations, Sample Documents, and Glossary.  To view some of the sample documents you will need free Adobe Acrobat Reader software. 

      Table of contents

      The Table of Contents provides the default launching points into the libraries.  It provides one possible structure for study, a structure that may well have been customized by the instructor through addition to, deletion from, or reorganization of the original Table of Contents.  If your browser is Internet Explorer, you may expand or contract the outline in the Table of Contents by clicking on a topic heading.  This feature is not currently supported (and generates a Java script error) if your browser is Netscape.  Note that the Table of Contents includes links only to commentary, judicial opinions, and problems.  In turn, commentary and problems include links to relevant statutes.   From this editorial convention you should not infer that judicial opinions are more important or controlling than statutes.  I use this convention only to keep the Table of Contents a manageable size.    

      Libraries

      The Libraries link on the Table of Contents provides an alternative set of launching points.  By choosing "Libraries" you may go directly to any of the specific libraries of materials.  In choosing either the Problem or the Commentary library, you may review the materials either by selecting from an alphabetical list or by pursuing a sequence that corresponds to the topical sequence presented in the Table of Contents.   

     News, E-Mail, Discussion, and Links

     The "News" feature, accessible from the right frame of the opening screen, enables you to check on recent developments (cases, statutes, regulations, proposals, events, or stories) posted on Professor Neustadter's electronic reserve page for Secured Transactions at the Santa Clara University School of Law Library.  From the right frame of the opening screen you may also e-mail the author, participate in threaded discussion on line, or pursue selected links to general commercial and bankruptcy law web sites and other sites of interest to law students and lawyers.

     Frames

     You may manipulate the frames in which materials appear in one of three ways. 

     1.  You may hide the left frame and enlarge the right frames by clicking on the horizontal arrow that appears in the upper right hand corner of the left frame; you may redisplay the left frame by clicking on the horizontal arrow that appears in the upper right hand corner upper right frame.  Similarly, you may enlarge the upper right frame and hide the lower right frame, and thereafter redisplay the lower right frame, either by clicking on the vertical arrow that appears in the upper right hand corner of the left frame or by clicking on the vertical arrow that appears in the upper right hand corner of the upper right frame. 

     2.  You may resize the frames by "grabbing" the line that divides two frames and moving the line.  You "grab" a line by moving the mouse arrow over the line until a double arrow appears and then clicking and holding the left mouse button while you move the line.   Release the left mouse button when you have moved a line to the desired location.   Resizing lasts only until you close your application.  To permanently resize the frames, open the file "Index.html" using an html editor, grab and move a dividing line, and then save the file. 

     3.  You may turn frames off and view the material in a single frame.  However, if you do so a hypertext link may open an entirely new frame, obscuring the frame you were viewing, and you will need to minimize or close the new frame to return to the frame that you were viewing.  If you leave frames on, internal hypertext links will generally display new information in one of the two right frames and external hypertext links will generally display information in a new window.   

     Font size

     To increase or decrease font size, click in the relevant frame and then, from your browser's pull down menu, select "Text Size" (in Internet Explorer) or "Increase Font" or "Decrease Font" (in Netscape) to adjust the size of the font. 

     Editing, annotating, or adding to the book

     You may edit, annotate, or add to your book (e.g. write an answer to a problem, highlight text) in several ways.   Perhaps the most convenient method is to open a particular file in your word processing application (e.g. Word or WordPerfect) and then edit, annotate, or add to the file as you desire.  Alternatively, you may use an html editor such as Microsoft FrontPage Editor or Netscape Composer (each of which are part of the respective browsers).   Suppose, for example, that you wish to write an answer to Problem.Identifying collateral.  Each problem file is numbered.  To identify the correct number of the problem file on which you wish to work, run the cursor over the name of the problem in the Table of Contents of the book and locate the number of the problem just below the left browser frame.  The file containing Problem.Identifying collateral is number 61.  Open your word processing program or html editing program.  Select the command for opening a file.  Then locate the folder (i.e. directory) in which you have saved your book.  Select the subfolder entitled "Main."  Select the subfolder entitled "Problem."  Select Problem 61, and then open, edit, annotate, or add to it.  Use a similar procedure to work on commentary, cases and statutes, all of which are subfolders under the subfolder entitled "Main."  The file containing a case or statute is identified by the case name or statute number.   

     IMarkup.com provides an alternative useful tool that allows you to highlight, draw, create pop-up text boxes, and perform other functions on a file directly through your browser.   You may download a free 30 day trial version.  Thereafter, the purchase price for a single license is $39.95.